Sumita Kale: The burden of anaemia

The numbers are staggering "" almost 75 per cent of Indian children below the age of three suffer from anaemia; 60-70 per cent of adolescent girls are anaemic; 25,000 of the 1,32,000 deaths associated with childbirth result from anaemia. To bring the issue closer to home, the accompanied table points to one stark result "" it does not matter which group you belong to, at least 4 out of every 10 women you know are probably anaemic.

Anaemia refers to inadequate levels of haemoglobin, which carries oxygen through blood to the various body tissues. Although the government has programmes in place, this disease continues to cast its shadow on the health of women and children. Anaemia in pregnancy not only leads to maternal complications, but also endangers the health and survival of infants by resulting in low birth weight and lowered immunity to infections. As the child grows, the problems get compounded as anaemia contributes to lower mental and motor development, fatigue and low productivity in adulthood and finally, through adolescent girls once they begin menstruation, the cycle continues with its impact on poor pregnancy outcomes.

The causes of anaemia are diverse "" malnutrition, and therefore, poverty are the main culprits, while worm infestations and malaria are other significant contributors. As always, the low social status of women is a primary reason for the widespread prevalence of this disease "" women invariably eat last in the household and undertake more frequent fasts than men, little realising that their nutritional deficiencies are being passed on to future generations.

The Indian Medical Association has placed anaemia as one of leading causes of school dropouts and NGO interventions in the slum and rural areas have shown that school attendance improves when iron deficiency is tackled. As anaemia affects a child's physical development and capacity to learn, the "vicious cycle of poverty" gets exacerbated "" in fact, the impact of anaemia on intergenerational transmission of poverty has hardly been researched. However, the productivity losses have been estimated by The Micronutrient Initiative, a Canadian NGO "" India loses 1.27 per cent of its GDP annually due to this disease (and this estimate does not include the social and economic loss from maternal deaths).

While treatment is fortunately inexpensive, it is the lack of awareness and accessibility to iron and folic acid tablets that are issues to address at the national level. It is most unfortunate that such a debilitating but highly preventable disease has been allowed to affect our population to such proportions. The Agharkar Research Institute in Pune is just one of the many institutes working to increase the understanding of this problem amongst rural women by monitoring their haemoglobin levels and providing easy recipes and live demonstrations to create nutritional awareness, which seems to be the best approach to fighting this all-pervasive disease.

While the government and many NGOs are working towards reducing the burden of anaemia, given its wide incidence at all strata of society, it is actually possible for each and everyone to do their bit "" insist that the women and children you know take their iron and folic acid tablets, eat three meals a day, include green leafy vegetables in their diet and so on "" a simple message which will transform the lives of generations to come.

The writer is Advisor, Indicus Analytics