{"id":205911,"date":"2022-09-14T20:16:40","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T14:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=205911"},"modified":"2022-09-14T20:16:40","modified_gmt":"2022-09-14T14:46:40","slug":"indias-great-anaemia-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/indias-great-anaemia-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"India\u2019s great anaemia mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Source<\/strong>&#8211; The post is based on the article <strong>\u201cIndia\u2019s great anaemia mystery\u201d <\/strong>published in<strong> The Indian Express <\/strong>on <strong>14th September 2022<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Syllabus: <\/strong>GS2- Development and management of health<\/p>\n<p><strong>News-<\/strong> The article explains the increase in prevalence of anaemia among women and children despite improvement in other health indicators.<\/p>\n<p>The prevalence of anaemia among women has increased from 53% in 2015 to 57% in 2019-20. Similarly, the percentage of anaemic children has increased from 58% in 2015 to 67% in 2019-20.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>How WHO defines anaemia?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>Anemia is a condition where the number of red blood cells or the hemoglobin concentration within them is lower than normal.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>What could be the probable reason behind it?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p><strong>Cereal-centric diets<\/strong>, with relatively less consumption of iron-rich food groups. However, there is increase in children and women consuming iron dense food from NFHS-4 to NFHS-5. The children consuming an adequate diet has increased from 9.6 percent to 11.3 percent from NFHS-4 to NFHS-5.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Poor water quality and sanitation conditions<\/strong>. Sanitation coverage of households has increased from 48.5 percent to 70.2 percent. Households with access to improved drinking water sources improved from 94.4 percent to 95.9 per cent.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Delivery of health and nutritional interventions<\/strong>. Women\u2019s consumption of folic acid during pregnancy and access to ante-natal check-ups has improved over the last five years<\/p>\n<p><strong>Women\u2019s empowerment<\/strong> is another factor. But women empowerment has increased during this period<\/p>\n<h5><strong>Why does the data on anaemia seem anomalous?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>Several factors that are responsible for anaemia have improved since NFHS-4.<\/p>\n<p>All other major undernutrition outcomes like stunting, wasting and underweight have improved over the past four to five years.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>How to properly understand the reason behind the increase in anaemia?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>There is a need to go beyond haemoglobin and look for some other iron-specific biomarkers, like serum ferritin and marker of inflammation. It will identify the role of iron deficiency as a driver of anaemia.<\/p>\n<p>Measurement of anaemia should account for non-iron nutritional deficiencies like that of vitamin B12. There is a need for screening for genetic blood disorders, like thalassemia and sickle-cell anaemia.<\/p>\n<p>The NFHS data must be expanded on food consumption to estimate the intake of various micronutrients. We need to compare it against recommended intake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source&#8211; The post is based on the article \u201cIndia\u2019s great anaemia mystery\u201d published in The Indian Express on 14th September 2022. Syllabus: GS2- Development and management of health News- The article explains the increase in prevalence of anaemia among women and children despite improvement in other health indicators. The prevalence of anaemia among women has&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/indias-great-anaemia-mystery\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">India\u2019s great anaemia mystery<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10500],"class_list":["post-205911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-indian-express","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}