Prevalence of Anemia among Adolescent Girls in a Rural Area of Indore, Central India

Background: India is one of the countries with the largest prevalence of anemia. The studies about adolescent anemia limited to small population in rural area around Index Medical College Indore. In this study, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of anemia and risk factors among adolescent girls in a PHC in jurisdiction of this institute, where social customs and diet are applied strictly and adopted as taboo in the society. Materials and Methods: The population of study was recruited from 12- to 18-year-old girls from various schools in and around the villages under PHCs having dependent rural population of Index Medical College, Hospital and Research Center, Indore. It also included the adolescent girl patients who applied to Pediatric Outpatient clinics. The criteria of anemia were accepted as the hemoglobin value below 12 g/dl for girls. Thalassemia traits, patients having chronic illness, or taking medication were excluded from the study. The following investigations done were complete blood count, peripheral blood smear study, reticulocyte counts, osmotic fragility test, Sickling test, alkali denaturation test for HbF, and hemoglobin electrophoresis. Results: The girls aged 12–18 years were 196 (23.33%) who were selected for the analysis to know the prevalence and type of anemia. The overall prevalence of anemia was 55.10%. About 108 out of 196 adolescent girls had varying severity of anemia. About 44.90% of girls were found to be non-anemic. Out of all 196 adolescent girls, 77 (70.00%) were mildly anemic, 16 (14.54%) were moderately anemia, and 17 (15.45%) were severely anemic. The Mean and SD values found were 11.23 ± 2.53 gm/dl. In the present study, the analysis of the prevalence of morphological types of anemia revealed that 83 (42.34%) girls had normocytic normochromic blood picture. Whereas the microcytic hypochromic peripheral smears were seen in 45 (22.95%) adolescent girls. The microcytic normochromic anemia was found in 50 (25.51%) cases and macrocytic picture was seen in 12 (6.12%) participants. All were advised Hb electrophoresis. Two of the girls did not report and 15 girls’ sample were analyzed. It showed 1 (0.51%) girl had sickle cell disease, 5 (2.55%) had sickle cell trait, and nine did reveal for sickle thalassemia disease. Conclusion: This study has demonstrated that anemia, among rural girls of small villages and Taluka in Madhya Pradedh, is also high as in other parts of the country. This indicates the importance of including adolescents in the risk group to improve their iron status and the need for planning intervention programs that would increase the hemoglobin levels among adolescent girls through prophylaxis treatment, dietary modification, and helminth control. Increasing the educational level of rural girls would also ensure safe motherhood