Compliance and patterns of iron-folic acid intake among adolescent girls and antenatal women in rural Tamil Nadu

Adherence to Iron-Folic Acid Supplementation and Associated Factors among Pregnant Women in Kasulu Communities in North-Western Tanzania

“…The present study revealed that women who attended ANC visit in the first trimester were likely to adhere to the IFAS program 3.7 times more compared to those who started ANC visit in the second trimester and third trimester. This was consistent with studies conducted in North Wollo Zone-Ethiopia, Ibadan-Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Tamil Nadu-India, which reported that early registration in the first and second trimester has a positive effect to adherence to IFAS program than in the third trimester [16,27,29,38]. The possible reasons for adherence might be the knowledge on the time to start ANC, beliefs, perception, distance to the health facility, and delayed ANC visit attributed to HIV testing to both women and their part-ners.…”

“…However, in the present study, women from the families eating twice or less were found to be 3.4 times more likely to adhere to IFAS as compared to women from the families who ate three times and more. This was contrary to a study conducted in India, which showed that women from households with high wealth quintile were less likely to adhere to IFAS due to good health and able to access them when needed [27]. The reasons might be education level, occupation of women and their partners or household income, location, and verse versa.…”

“…Similarly, studies conducted in Kiambu, Kenya (32.7%), and Amhara, Western Ethiopia (20.4%), also found the low adherence to IFAS among pregnant women [19,20]. Also, adherence to IFAS was modestly higher compared to the studies conducted in Eastern Kenya (18.3%), Uganda (12%), Norway (16%), and Northern Tanzania (16.1%) [21][22][23][24] and lower compared to studies conducted in Senegal (51%), Kathmandu-Nepal (73.2%), Tamil Nadu-India (60.6%), and Mizan-Aman-Ethiopia (70.6%) [25][26][27][28]. Some of the probable reasons of inconsistency might be a different study subject, sociodemographic characteristics, locality, follow-up and reminding mechanism, knowledge of IFAS, and qualities of health services offered in the health facilities including counseling on its benefits, the average number of IFAS recommended during pregnancy, and belief on the use of IFAS.…”

Public health interventions to improve maternal nutrition during pregnancy: a nationally representative study of iron and folic acid consumption and food supplements in India

“…Women's affiliation to the social groupdocumented as caste (categorised as Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Others (who are not eligible to receive incentives from the government)) and religion (categorised as Hindu, Muslim and Others)is also considered along with their household economic status (measured in terms of wealth quintiles: poorest, poorer, middle, richer and richest). Previous studies have found that these variables had considerable influence in determining the interventions addressing maternal nutrition during pregnancy (19,20) .…”

A Community based Study of Anaemia Burden using Hemocue 201 in Eastern India

“…(20,21,22 )Studies conducted among adolescent girls by Sevaraj K et al, Chakma T et al observed consumption of IFA tablets up to 60.6%, 89% respectively which were much higher as compared to our study. (23,24)…”