“…Non-infectious causes include malnutrition (Fishman et al, 2000;Semba and Bloem, 2002;Kazembe et al, 2007;Allen and Peerson, 2009), inherited haemoglobinopathies (Morris et al, 2006) and thalassemias (Wambua et al, 2006). Infectious causes include malaria (Crawley, 2004), urogenital schistosomiasis (caused by Schistosoma haematobium), soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH) caused by Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura and hookworm (Brooker et al, 1999;Stoltzfus et al, 2000;Bates et al, 2007), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection (Adias et al, 2006) and bacteraemia caused by Steptococcus pneumoniae, non-typhi Salmonella spp., Haemophilus influenzae type b (Means, 2000;Williams et al, 2009) and other organisms. Iron-deficiency is the most common reason for anaemia and efforts to mitigate it include the delivery of iron supplements to populations at risk (WHO, 2001).…”