Volume : 7, Issue : 4, April - 2018

Prevalence of anemia among infants

Lalit Kumar, Aksharaditya Shukla, Ranjit P. Kangle

Abstract :

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:200%"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:#252525;&#10;background:white">Introduction:</span></u></b><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:#252525;background:white"> Anemia is a major health problem affect worldwide population at an epidemiological scale with 25% of population suffers from anemia. According to WHO every other pre-school child suffers from anemia. The aim of the study is to determine the prevalence of anemia in infants up to one year of age from birth.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:200%"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:#252525;&#10;background:white">Materials &amp; Methods</span></u></b><u><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:#252525;background:white">:</span></u><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:#252525;background:white">The study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital in Belgavi, Karnataka between January to March 2016. A total of 231 infants were registered in the study.<u><o:p></o:p></u></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:200%"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:#252525;&#10;background:white">Results:</span></u></b><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:#252525;&#10;background:white">High prevalence of anemia was detected in the study population. At birth, 9.8% of cases show anemia, which steadily increased to 49.1% at 6 months and 86.7% by the end of one year of life with slight difference between the sexes <u><o:p></o:p></u></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:200%"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:#252525;&#10;background:white">Conclusion</span></u></b><u><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:#252525;background:white">:</span></u><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:#252525;background:white"> This study highlights the fact that there is an increasing trend of anemia with increasing age in infancy and urgent steps has to be taken so as to prevent permanent disabilities.<o:p></o:p></span></p>