By Maya Palit
At the beginning of May, a new study by Metropolis Healthcare, a chain of pathology labs, analysed 2, 18, 200 blood samples across India, and revealed that one in two women are anaemic. It noted that not all cases were related to iron deficiency, however: some people suffered from conditions like Beta Thalassemia, for instance, a blood disorder which causes severe anaemia.
Previously as well, studies have pointed to the high incidence of anaemia in the country. Last year an Indiaspend article stated that although the proportion of pregnant and anaemic women had fallen in the last decade (this is being attributed to better sanitation and education drives), India still has more cases of anaemic women than any other country.
Over the years, one of the solutions offered by the government has been to provide people with iron folic acid tablets, from offering it to students in government schools in Delhi to promoting these supplements for high-risk groups like pregnant women in primary health centres. And a District Family Welfare Officer in Jalandhar, Punjab announced yesterday that they were contemplating a drive to provide these tablets to women in May.
But last week, reports from Rajasthan suggested that although more than 60 percent of pregnant anaemic women were given iron tablets to “prevent and cure anaemia”, only 17 percent of women consumed them. Besides being impossible to monitor the consumption of the tablets, the director of public health in Rajasthan also said they had heard that the supplements caused nausea and constipation for several women.
Are the tablets the best solution then? What is urgently needed instead is a focus on improving nutrition available to pregnant women and other high-risk groups for anaemia. (This article indicates, for instance, that funds allocated for the Integrated Child Development Scheme which aims to provide malnourished children with food, amongst other things, have been declining over the past five years.) Is it about time then that the focus shift from distributing folic tablets, to doing the tougher work of facilitating more schemes that provide nutrition, in order to make a difference?