By recent estimates 32.9% of world population or 2.36 Billion people suffer from Anemia due to all causes and the dominant cause of anemia is iron deficiency in more than half the cases. Preschool children aged 6 months to 5 years are the worst affected population in whom the disease could affect more than 50% children. A recent survey NFHS-4 measured that 58.5% of Indian children younger than 5 years suffer from anemia.I am not sure whether you get surprised by these facts.
Most of the time when we think of common chronic diseases, Heart disease, Tuberculosis, Diabetes etc.occupy our mind-place. Despite these high numbers of affected people why does anemia not figure into the most important priorities of global health/child health? The reasons could be that diseases which cause death are given the highest priority and although anemia is the commonest chronic disease it is usually…
