STM Article Repository

Introduction: Anaemia in pregnancy has remained an important public health problem since last many years and the efforts in curtail this malody has remained largely unsuccessful.

Aims and Objectives: With the aim of decreasing the prevalence of anaemia among pregnant females the objectives were (1) to find out the portion of mothers with pregnancy having anaemia. (2) To find out its clinico-administrative co-relates.

Materials and Methods: The secondary data obtained from the registers maintained in MCH section of Rural Health Training Centre (RHTC) was used for the analysis.

Results: The proportions of severe anemia (Hb < 8.4 gm/dl), anemia and no anemia were 63 (5.1%), 890 (72.6%) & 273 (22.3%) respectively. The underweight was count to be risk factor for anemia but height was not. The relation of gestation with anemia demonstrated that majority of studied women were anemic a priori. The relation of anemia with birth order did not demonstrate any definite trend. It was observed that lower is the age higher is the risk of being anemic; however severely anemic were more amongst aged women. Amongst 1046 women with gestational period more than 12 weeks, it was observed that for 302 (around 1/3rd) no iron supplementation was done, and for majority of the rest (547) the number of tablets issued were less than 100.

Conclusion and Recommendation: It is concluded that to combat anemia, a multipronged attack including administrative supervision in the form of issuing Iron tablets to right women in right dose in right time by the right person is required. Health workers compliance of ‘issuing’ iron is of equal or rather more important than that of patient’s compliance of ‘consuming’ iron. Further studies, in this direction are required.