Health status of school age children employed in carpet weaving in Ganderbal Block.

In a health and morbidity screening among 500 carpet weaving children and 450 children attending school selected at random in a rural field practice area the age group studied was from 6 to 16. Each child was thoroughly interviewed and examined for any deviation from health. The height and weight were taken by standard procedures and clinical assessment of morbidity and nutritional status was also observed. The results showed that the heights and weights of schoolchildren were greater than those of the carpet weaving children in both boys and girls. Clinically, 56% of the schoolchildren as against 41.6% of carpet weaving children had no nutritional defects. The main complaints in the carpet weaving children were in order of descent, headache, blurring of vision, backache, abdominal pain, limb pains, and respiratory tract infection. Both groups of children were later followed up for six months from September 1981 to March 1982. The incidence of subjective and objective deviations from health were higher in the carpet weaving than in the schoolchildren and the first ten major complaints in the carpet weaving children were respiratory tract infection, headache, backache, pain in the abdomen, injuries (major and minor), joint pains, diarrhoea and dysentery, fever of unknown origin, dermatitis, and chilblains.