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Evaluation of effectiveness of daily or weekly Iron, Folic acid supplementation with or without intensive health education among adolescent anaemic school girls of Cuttack
Authors: Mohapatra RK, Mohapatra TK, Yadav MK, Mohanty P, Yadav KP
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Anaemia is currently one of the most common and intractable nutritional problems globally. Nutritional anaemia in India is common morbidity seen in late adolescent and young female population. There are many conflicting opinions regarding dosage of iron & folic acid supplementation for managing this simple nutritional deficiency disorders. Anaemia has been defined as hemoglobin <12 gm% in adolescent girls, with haemoglobin level between 10-11.9 gm%, 7-9.9 gm% and <7 gm% are termed as mild, moderate and severe anaemia respectively. Haemoglobin estimation was done at the beginning and end of the study. The mean age of study subjects in ‘daily iron & folic acid supplementation’, ‘weekly iron & folic acid supplementation’ and ‘weekly iron & folic acid supplementation with health education’ group was 15.85, 15.76 & 15.72 years respectively. Their mean & SD pre-intervention Haemoglobin was 10.1±0.14gm/dl, 10.3±0.02gm/dl and 9.94±0.13gm/dl respectively. The mean & SD post-intervention Hb was 12.34±0.11 gm/dl, 12.39±0.12 gm/dl and 12.73±0.15gm/dl. Our study shows clearly advantage of weekly iron and folic acid therapy among adolescent school girls of selected schools of Cuttack district over daily iron therapy. Mean rise of haemoglobin% in daily and weekly groups are almost similar whereas adverse drug reaction percentage is less in weekly supplemented Group B & C.
KEYWORDS: anaemia, iron supplement, iron, haemoglobin, folic acid