Iron Deficiency Anemia among Women of Reproductive Age, an Important Public Health Problem: Situation Analysis

Abstract

Background: Iron deficiency is a major cause of anemia and is more prevalent in developing countries, posing additional burden on health care systems, in the presence of scarcity of resources. The high-risk group consists of females and children but comparatively it is higher in females due to physiological reasons. Multiple factors can predict anemia, which in turn leads to various adverse outcomes. Objective: The purpose of this literature review was to review and synthesize the findings from literature about the burden, causes, outcomes and important interventions of iron deficiency anemia for developing countries. Methods: An extensive literature review was carried out by retrieving articles from various databases like Pub med, Google scholar, Science direct, World Bank and WHO databases. Relevant articles were retrieved from different databases by using following text words and phrases: 'anemia', 'Iron deficiency', 'risk factors of anemia', 'outcomes of anemia', 'interventions' and developing countries. Results: Multiple determinants of iron deficiency anemia have been identified in the literature including genetic and environmental factors. Some of these factors are lack of proper diet, poor socioeconomic status, high parity of women, access to poor health and genetic etc. Moreover, anemia can result in various poor outcomes like fatigue, poor mental health, lack of concentration, poor feto-neonatal outcomes like stillbirth, preterm birth and postpartum Hemorrhage. Conclusion: Iron deficiency anemia is one of the important public health problems in developing countries among the women of reproductive age group. Multiple factors like age, parity, socioeconomic status and diet can determine the stores of iron in the women of reproductive age group. Anemia can lead to multiple adverse outcomes, which can be prevented by doing appropriate cost-effective interventions on time.

Identifying risk factors of anemia among women of reproductive age in Rwanda - a cross-sectional study using secondary data from the Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey 2014/2015

“…Evidence suggests that improved economic status is associated with appropriate nutrition conditions (27), lower infection morbidity (26), increased access to health services as well as other favourable living conditions (27,28), all of which in turn influence anemia. Malnourished women have greater risk of iron deficiency, the most common proximate cause of anemia (1) and malnutrition is often associated with poor socio-economic status (29). Interventions that aim to empower women economically should be considered in order to reduce anemia prevalence.…”

Risk factors of anemia among Women of Reproductive Age in Rwanda: implications for designing better interventions

“…Anemia is a multifaceted problem where nutrition and economic status work in synergy. Evidence suggested that improved economic status was associated with appropriate nutrition conditions (26), lower infection morbidity (25), increased access to health services as well as other favourable living conditions (26,27), all of which influence anemia. Malnourished women have greater risk of iron deficiency -the most common proximate cause of anemia (1) and they are mostly associated with poor socio-economic status (28).…”

Development of a reproducible method of analysis of iron, zinc and phosphorus in vegetables digests by SEC-ICP-MS

“…Vegetarian diets have become more common in developed countries where people are advised to eat more vegetables to reduce the incidence of non-communicable diseases including obesity (Turner-McGrievy, Mandes, & Crimarco, 2017), diabetes (Pawlak, 2017) and cardiovascular diseases (Keung & Owen, 2004) as well as environmental concerns associated with meat production. Although the beneficial effects of a vegetarian diet are well recognised, there is a risk of non-haem iron deficiency anaemia (Mawani, Ali, Bano, & Ali, 2016;Cairo, Silva, Bustani, & Marques, 2014). Iron deficiency leads to inflammation (Nunes & Tátá, 2017), impaired immune (Hassan et al, 2016) and endocrine (Maldonado-Araque et al, 2018) functions.…”