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Maternal anemia needs to be checked as a precondition

Pankaj Karmakar
DDING a huge burden on the national economy, anaemia has emerged as a severe public health problem in Bangladesh.
The prevalence of anaemia is especially high among pregnant women, adolescent girls and young children.
Around 45 percent women in Bangladesh suffer from anaemia during pregnancy, say experts.
Iron deficiency along with hookworm infection, vitamin A deficiency, malaria infection, chronic infections likeTB/ HIV,
Hemoglobinopathies and Thalassemia are the main reasons for anaemia.
Due to iron deficiency the key reasons for anaemia around 400,000 people die annually across the world. Around 60 percent of total anaemia is caused by iron deficiency.
Because of anaemia, women face different sorts of complications during delivery. The complications include prolonged labour during delivery, delivering underweight child, maternal and neonatal death.
Maternal anaemia also increases
the risk of maternal death and infants of mo±ers who suffer from iron deficiency are more likely to have low iron stores and become anaemic. It also causes preterm delivery.
During pregnancy, the demand of blood of a woman increases sharply as her blood circulation increases. A mother has to fulfil her body's demand as well as feed the foetus.
That is why if a mother suffers from anaemia, it poses severe risk on her health, said Dr. Tahmeed Ahmed, director, Centre for Nutrition and
Food Security of ICDDR.B.
Due to anaemia, the resistance of a human body sharply reduces and the anaemic persons become hub of infectious diseases.
Income of a person, who works on daily productivity basis, drastically reduces as working capacity, efficiency and endurance also reduce.
Moreover, the cognitive development of people is severely hindered due to anaemia. An anaemic woman cannot concentrate on her job.
Referring to the economic loss, Dr. Tahmeed said the nation has to lose 7.9 percent of its total Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The government has taken different initiatives to address the issue. The initiatives include, among other things, micronutrient supplementation, dietary improvement, parasitic disease control, food fortification and family planning and safe motherhood.
Among those micronutrient supplementation, parasitic disease control and family planning and safe motherhood are being running well, while dietary improvement and food fortification programme has seen little improvement.
He also stressed the need for controlling anaemia and said that it must be prioritised to achieve several of the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
Food fortification aims to supply micronutrients in amounts that are provided by a good, well-balanced diet, and improve the nutritional status of a large proportion of the population. Fortification requires neither changes in existing food pattern nor individual compliance.
Aiming to address maternal anaemia, the government has introduced a programme under which 100 Iron Folic Acid (IFA) tablets are distributed among the pregnant women.
In most of the cases, pregnant women do not receive the tablets. Even though some mothers receive those, they do not take it properly for several reasons.
16.3 percent pregnant women does not consider it as necessary, 25.5 percent due to objection of family members, 12 percent due to side-effects of tablets, 19.5 percent due to lack of supply, 6.1 percent
forget to take it and other factors.
The tablets are given wrapped in a normal paper. Whenever the IFA tablets come to contact with air, its colour becomes black. That is why women and their family members become apprehensive about it and give up taking those tablets.
The government should distribute the tablets packed in a bottle or blister packet, suggested Dr. Tahmeed.
Even the health workers do not know about the necessity of IFA tablets. That is why they cannot brief their customers well.
Talking about government's different policies for improvement of maternal and child health, Dr. Tahmeed said there are a number of government policies to address the issue, but their progress of implementation is very disheartening.
Political willingness and mass awareness are needed to address the 'national problem', opined the nutrition expert.