A prospective study of growth and nutrition of Aboriginal children from birth to two years in North-West Australia

Abstract

I11-health is very prevalent in Australian Aborigines whose infants and children are often undernourished and have high rates of infections, particularly of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts [1–4]. The high levels of morbidity which exist in young Aborigines are demonstrated by the hospital admission rates of Aboriginal infants for gastroenteritis in Western Australia being 16 to 20 times those for non-Aboriginal infants [5]. Despite the seriousness of these problems, there is little systematic information about the factors which exist in Aboriginal communities to cause unfavourable poor growth in their infants and young children which is usually associated with high rates of infections. The “Kimberley Mothers’ and Babies’ Project” was undertaken in several remote communities in the Kimberley region of the tropical far north of Western Australia, which has one of the largest populations of full-blood Aborigines in Australia, to investigate these circumstances at the community level. The present paper reports some aspects of the project which document maternal and environmental factors which were associated with growth and health outcomes in a prospectively studied cohort of 48 infants born in the region.