Prevalence and Risk Factors of Anaemia Among Pregnant women in Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract:To assess the prevalence and risk factors of anaemia in pregnancy and recommend a cut-off value for antenatal women in developing countries, a cross sectional study was carried in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Port Harcourt, a 523 bed tertiary health care institution in Nigeria. 1371 apparently healthy asymptomatic pregnant women visiting the antenatal clinic for the first time were enrolled for the study. Another 60 age-matched non-pregnant apparently healthy women served as controls. Haemoglobin concentration, malaria, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)S, haemoglobin electrophoretic pattern and C-reactive protein as marker of infection were investigated using standard haematological and serological procedures. Anaemia in pregnancy (Hb <11.0g/dl) and (Hb<10.0g/dl) were found to be 23.2% and 6.7% respectively. The aetiology of anaemia was found to be multifactorial; 40.2% had anaemia of infection, 20.3% had Plasmodium falciparum alone, 8.5% had HIV alone, 2.5% had HIV and malaria parasite co-infection; 8.9% undetermined infections and 0.6% had sickle cell anaemia. There is moderate prevalence of anaemia in pregnancy in this part of the world. Since the mean Hb value of the pregnant women in this study was 11.62±1.21g/dl and the pregnant women with Hb values around 10g/dl are apparently healthy, a cut-off value of 10.0g/dl may be considered ideal for defining anaemia in pregnancy in developing countries.

Anaemia in Relation to Body Mass Index (BMI) and Socio- Demographic Characteristics in Adult Nigerians in Ebonyi State

“…These values are higher than the present figure of 21.7%. Data on Anaemia prevalence in Nigeria have been dominated by figures from pregnant women [24], preschool age children [25][26][27], and critically ill children [28]. However, the study by Olayemi and Halim [29] among apparently healthy adults Nigerians documented Anaemia prevalence of 51.8%, a value higher than the present figure of 21.7%.…”

Prevalence of anaemia among pregnant women in Derna city, Libya

“…18,19 And lower in women attended to antenatal clinic at hospital of Potro Novo-Cape Verde, Benin 38.8% and in other two studies in Nigeria 23.2% and 29%, 16.6% in Northwest Ethiopia. 15,[20][21][22] Interestingly, this finding is higher to the overall prevalence found among pregnant women than other studies in the Middle East and North Africa, 40.08 % in Algeria, 26.2% in Bahraini, 27.1% in East Anatolian Province, Turkey, Jordan (34.7%) and (39%) in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. [23][24][25][26][27] There are many reasons to explain this variation.…”

Knowledge and Practice of Anemia among pregnant women attending antenatal clinic in Dr. Prabhakar Kore hospital, Karnataka-A Cross sectional study

“…7 Other study in Nigeria noted that majority of the women were 30-34 years (34.1%) followed by of 25-18 years (33.5%), 20-24 years (14.8%), 35-39 years (12.9%) and rest were in other age group which was different from our study. 8 One of the study of Kalyobia showed that 30% women were 18-25 years, 50% were 25-32 years and 20% were more than 32 years of age. 9 Majority 148 (37.0%) of the women had secondary level education followed by primary level education 121 (30.3%), higher secondary 55 (13.8%), illiterate 43 (10.8%) and 33 (8.3%) had graduate level education in this study.…”