Prevalence of anaemia in urban college going girl students

Abstract

Background: Anaemia is the most common nutritional deficiency disorder in the world. The prevalence of anaemia is alarmingly high in India. Major work regarding prevalence of anaemia has been done in pregnant females, adolescents and young children. There are relatively few limited studies in college going youth population in developing countries like India.

Objective: The objective for conducting the present study was to determine the prevalence of anaemia in urban, educated, young, unmarried, college going girl students.

Material and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among the 74 urban, college going girl students in age group of 18-28 years. The haemoglobin was estimated by “Compolab”, based on broad spectrum photometric measurement of haemoglobin in unaltered whole capillary blood.

Results: The prevalence of anaemia was found 36.49% in the present study. Out of the 36.49% anaemics, 35.14% were mildly anaemic that is Hb was in range of 10-11.99 gm% and only 1.35% was moderately anaemic that is Hb was in range of 7-9.99 gm%. In the present study, no subject was severely found anaemic.

Conclusions: Anaemia is a multifactorial disorder. It requires a multipronged strategy for its prevention and management. The results in our study suggested that innovative strategies like good education, improving health and hygiene awareness and up liftment in socioeconomic status might be helpful in reducing the prevalence of anaemia.