HIGHER PROPORTION OF ANAEMIA AMONG ADOLESCENTS A CAUSE OF CONCERN: AN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTES TO CONSIDER IRON SUPPLEMENTATION IN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES AS A MEASURE FOR TACKLING ANAEMIA
Anaemia is a common problem in adolescent girls in India. Poor nutritional status is a vicious cycle of adolescent anaemia leading to anaemia in adulthood in turn giving birth to low birth weight babies who grow up to be malnourished and anaemic child and adolescent. Nutritional Intervention Programmes in India focuses on provision of weekly iron folic acid supplementation to adolescent girls. To what extent this programme has been able to make an impact is not known.
METHODS:
It is an observational, cross-sectional study of adolescents in 7th, 8th, 9th standard in an urban school. The data was analysed using averages, proportions and statistical tests like chi square.
RESULTS:
202 adolescent’s haemoglobin levels were assessed. Of these 62% were girls and 38% were males. Mean age of the adolescents was 12.6 years. 25% of the adolescents had haemoglobin levels less than 12 gms%. 53% were mildly anaemic and 20% had moderate anaemia. Only 1.5% had severe anaemia. Mean Hb was 10.88 gm% with a standard deviation of 1.5. The difference observed between the haemoglobin status between boys and girls was statistically significant.
CONCLUSIONS:
The higher proportion of adolescents with anaemia is a cause of concern. Weekly iron folic acid supplementation provided by the government does not seem to have made the desired impact as yet. There is a need therefore to further strengthen the weekly iron folic acid supplementation by inter-sectoral collaboration between education and health departments. If all the educational institutes make a policy decision to implement weekly iron folic acid supplementation, then a large number of children who are in the educational institute could benefit making it a cost-effective and a feasible modality.