Burden and awareness of anemia among adolescent girls of residential school in Telangana
Bhushan D. Kamble, Remya Mary John, Chandralekha Kona, Mounika Reddy, Rashmi Kundapur, Neeraj AgarwalAbstract
Objectives
Adolescence is an important transition phase and the burden of anemia among adolescent school-going children is not well explored. The present study was carried out to determine the prevalence of anemia among school-going adolescent girls and to explore their awareness on anemia.
Methods
A cross-sectional study was conducted among 217 adolescent girls studying in a residential school of Bibinagar village, Telangana. A pre-tested, semi-structured questionnaire was administered to collect the data. Hemoglobin (Hb) was estimated using TrueHb. Data was entered into excel and was analyzed using SPSS software version 21.
Results
The mean (±SD) age of the adolescent girls was 13.8 (±0.99) years. About 74.2 % of the girls were in 12–14 years’ age group. About 91.7 % had attained menarche. The prevalence of anemia was 81.6 % with a mean (±SD) Hb of 9.5 (±2.7) g/dl among adolescent girls. Among the adolescent girls, 32.7 % had severe anemia, 31.8 % had moderate anemia and 17.1 % had mild anemia. About 86.2 % adolescent girls had heard of anemia while 60.8 % adolescent girls felt that anemia is preventable and only 27.6 % were aware about iron-rich foods. About 38 % of adolescent girls were not aware of any causes of anemia.
Conclusions
The prevalence of anemia was very high among the school-going adolescent girls of rural Telangana. The awareness regarding causes of anemia and iron-rich foods was low among study adolescent girls. Thus, there is a dire need to conduct frequent Test, Treat and Talk (T3) Anemia camps in schools through district school health program.