Sanjivani A. Wanjari1
ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: India is one of the countries with largest prevalence of anaemia. This is despite the NNAPP- National Nutritional Anaemia Prophylaxis Programme under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Anaemia in pregnancy is considered as a major risk factor for adverse maternal and perinatal outcome. The study was done to analyze the severity of anaemia in the study population. MATERIALS & METHODS: A one year study covering 2400 anaemic women was done at Daga Hospital Nagpur, which is a maternity hospital receiving a large number of women from lower socio-economic strata of society. Venous blood was collected and auto-analyser was used to determine five erythrocyte parameters including - Haemoglobin, haematocrit, mean corpuscular volume, mean haemoglobin concentration and mean haemoglobin corpuscular concentrations. RESULTS: The women were graded as mild, moderate and severe as per the WHO guidelines. Moderate anaemia HB = 7 to 9.9 accounted for the largest percentage of anaemia in our study and it was around 60 %. The mean age of women included in the study was 23.27 years. The most sensitive erythrocyte parameter was MCV which had mean value of 68.41, standard deviation SD: 9.62 and a statistically significant „pâ?? value of <0.05. Second sensitive parameter was haematocrit, mean: 28.34, SD: 5.25, p <0.05. CONCLUSION: Anaemia is an important cause of maternal ill health and poor neonatal outcome. Proper antenatal care, good nutrition and iron supplementation throughout the pregnancy can help achieve the goal of a healthy mother and healthy baby.
