Prevalence of Iron Deficiency Anaemia among Pregnant Women in Migratory Community, Narok County

Abstract

Globally, Iron Deficiency Anaemia (IDA) has been known to have negative effects on the lives of more than 2 billion people. Currently, pregnant women are the most vulnerable population corresponding to 24.8% of 3.7 billion people. The highest prevalence of anaemia exists in the developing world which is thought to be associated with the following factors; socio-economic factors, inadequate food intake, cultural taboos that hinder intake of certain foods known to be good sources of iron, infections, multiple pregnancies and low contraceptive prevalence use. However, there is limited published data on prevalence of Iron deficiency anaemia and possible risk factors among pregnant women attending Antenatal clinics in Kenya including Narok County.Therefore, the aimof this study was to establish the haemoglobinlevels of pregnant women in the migratory community, Narok County.In this cross-sectional study, pregnant women aged 15-49 years and wereattendingantenatal clinic at EwasoNgiro Health Centre in Narok Countywere randomly enrolled into the study using the clinic registers and table of random numbers generated using Micro Soft Excel 2007.Pregnant women who had Severe low haemoglobin levels were 3.0%, Moderate Haemoglobin levels 19.6%, while Mild haemoglobin levels were 38.9%. Those who had low haemoglobin levels were 61.5%, while normal haemoglobin levels above 11g/dL were 38.5%. The prevalence of Iron Deficiency Anaemia from the findings was reported to be at 61.5%, which was much higher than the national figure of 55.1% according to KDHS, 2014. This depicted that IDA is still a major concern in the migratory community. The County Ministry of Health should strengthen the policies for combating micronutrient deficiencies through integration of programmes and services at the community levels. In addition, review of the IFA policy should be done to incorporate early screening and management of IDA.