Prevalence of anemia in the children of tribal ashram schools in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra

Anemia is a very common problem in paediatric age group in many developing countries with an estimated prevalence of 43% of the World’s children. School children constitute 20.25% of total population in India and those are more vulnerable to this disease due to their rapid growth need of high iron. To study the prevalence of anemia among school children aged 8-16 years of the Tribal community from Tribal Ashram Schools in Ahmadnagar district of Maharashtra region and also assess its correlation to variable such as Gender and Body Mass Index (BMI). Total 310 children (including both boys & girls) between the ages of 8-16 years were selected from Two Ashram schools ofAhmednagar district of Maharashtra state. The school health check-up was undertaken in Ashram schools. All children were present in the school were interviewed and examined by a team of trained medical doctors. Hemoglobin estimation was done using Sahli’s Acid-Hematin methods. Statistical analysis was done by using SPSS software version 17. The overall prevalence of anemia among children in the age group of 8 to 16 years was 77.10 % (239/310). The highest prevalence of anemia was present in the girls (87.8 %) than boys (65.1 %) and there was high statistical significant difference of anemia between girls and boys (p = 0.000). It is concluded that anemia still constitutes a health problem among school children with the present prevalence of 77.1%