Prevalence of Anemia in Preschool Aged Children Living in Dominica

Abstract

Introduction: Anemia affects more than one billion people worldwide, with pregnant women and children under five years of age comprising the vast majority of those afflicted. The development of anemia is multifactorial and could stem from a variety of factors. Nutritional deficiencies especially iron, but also folate, vitamin B12, vitamin A, and protein appear to be the biggest factor. Diagnosing anemia in children under five years of age is of utmost importance because these nutrients are essential for their rapid phase of growth and development.Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of anemia in children under six years of age living in Dominica.Methods: This was a retrospective, descriptive study, examining the prevalence of anemia in preschool children, aged two to six years, living in Dominica from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2015. All available medical records of the children were collected and analyzed using Stata version 14. There were no exclusion criteria. Results and discussion:A sample population of 635 children was included in our study. The majority of children was females (54.7%), at least 3.5 years old (60.6%), and attended preschool in the parish of Saint George (58.7%). Our study determined that the prevalence of anemia was 19.3%. Additionally, we found that 22% of anemic children had a mean corpuscular volume below 75 fL, and 78% of anemic children had a mean corpuscular volume between 76 fL and 99 fL. Conclusion:The data in this study demonstrated that childhood anemia in Dominica is widely prevalent, and represents a public health issue that needs to be addressed. According to our data, 22% of anemic children had a mean corpuscular volume below 75 fL indicating a microcytic anemia. Microcytic anemia could suggest diseases such as iron deficiency and thalassemia among many other causes. Additionally, 78% of anemic children had a mean corpuscular volume between 76 fL and 99 fL indicating a normocytic anemia. Normocytic anemia could suggest chronic disease and sickle cell anemia among many others. Due to limited resources, we were unable to determine the specific cause of anemia; however, future studies should be conducted so that strategies could be developed, on a national level, to resolve this childhood burden.

Epidemiological Study of Anemia in Diyala Province / Iraq

“…We found no variation between the gender and anemia, although it was slightly more in boys but it was statistically insignificant. This finding was similar to the study done by Sailaja et al [15] and Windy Saufia et al [17], but it differs from Brittany Noel Robles et al [16] study which revealed the frequency of anemic girls 343 (54.7%) more than anemic boys 283(45.2%), anyway these insignificant alterations might be due to dissimilar sample size of study. It was found that the number of anemic children is more among mothers with an age range from 20-30-year, 88 children (75.2%) and this may be due to that maternal age group is the most common childbearing age, but there is an insignificant difference between the age of mother and the grade of anemia, p-value 0.78.…”

“…When a large part of the population is affected, this can have bad consequences for economic productivity [10,14,15]. There is evidence that antenatal iron supplementation, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), improves neonatal iron stores, thus delaying the age at which iron deficiency anemia is likely to develop during infancy [12,[16][17][18]. WHO considered the problem of anemia prevalence among the community as severe if the prevalence rate >40%, moderate if the rate is 20% to 39.9%, and mild if it is 5% to 19.9% [13,[19][20][21].…”

Prevalence of Anemia in Children from Latin America and the Caribbean and Effectiveness of Nutritional Interventions: Systematic Review and Meta–Analysis

“…Table 1 and Table 2 present the information of the included studies for preschool and school-age children, respectively. Most of the studies used cross-sectional design, although one was a retrospective study [13], thirteen were national surveys about health, diet, and lifestyle [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26], and five more were based on national surveys reports [27,28,29,30,31]. The studies were performed in Guyana [20], Argentina [29,32,33], Bolivia [26], Brazil [18,28,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50], Chile [51,52], Colombia [27], Costa Rica [53,54], Cuba [55,56], Dominican Republic [24,25], Ecuador [16,57], Uruguay [58], Jamaica [59], Dominica [13], El Salvador [23], Guatemala […”

Hematological and demographic profile of Pakistani children with isolated ventricular septal defects (VSDs)

“…Anemia affects more than one billion people worldwide, with a considerably high prevalence in pregnant women and children. Decreased hemoglobin levels and red blood cell count are the hallmarks of anemic condition [20]. In our study population, it was observed that majority of patients had Hb below normal range.…”