Effect Of Daily Versus Weekly Iron Folic Acid Supplementation on The Haemoglobin Levels of Children 6 To 36 Months of Urban Slums of Vadodara
Keywords:
Under 3, IFA supplementation, anaemia, weekly vs. daily supplementation, low socio-economic groupAbstract
Objective: To assess the effect of daily versus weekly iron folic acid (IFA) supplementation on the haemoglobin levels of children 6 to 36 months of urban slums of Vadodara
Design: Non-Randomized control supervised trial
Setting: Five out of 40 anganwadi centres were randomly selected. The centres were randomly divided into 3 groups i.e., daily, weekly and control.
Participants: All children age 6 to 36 months were selected
Intervention: Subjects of daily group (n=31) received one IFA tablet (19.8 mg of elemental iron/tablet) daily for 60 days; weekly group (n=30) received one IFA tablet per week for 19 weeks; control group (n=31) did not receive any supplementation.
Main Outcome Measure(s) included impact on haemoglobin levels, anemia prevalence.
Results: A significant rise in the hemoglobin levels of 2.03g/dl and 1.75g/dl was observed in daily and weekly group respectively, with anaemic subjects showing a higher rise. Overall prevalence of anemia reduced significantly by 35% and 43% respectively in daily and weekly group. Weekly supplementation showed fewer side effects and more reduction in anemia compared to daily.
Conclusions: IFA supplementation significantly increased haemoglobin levels of underprivileged children below 3y of age, irrespective of dose and regimen (daily or weekly). Weekly supplementation with medicinal iron can be used as a strategy for improving haemoglobin levels and anemia reduction among children 6 to 36 months with fewer side effects.
References
Stoltzfus R, Dreyfuss M. Guidelines for the use of iron supplements to prevent and treat iron deficiency anemia. WHO/INACG/UNICEF, 1997.
Sharma KD, Naidu AN. Anemia in Children, National Institute of Nutrition, India. 1984.
Gillispie S. Major issues in the control of iron deficiency. The micronutrient initiative, Canada. UNICEF, New York, 1998.
Kapur D, Agarwal K, Sharma S. Iron status of children aged 9 to 36 months in an urban slum: Integrated Child Development Service Project in Delhi, Indian Pediatrics 2000; 39: 136-144.
Pollit E. Development and Probabilistic nature of the functional consequences of iron deficiency anemia in children. American Society for Nutritional Sciences, 2000.
International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and Macro International. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), 2005–06, 2007.
Office of the Registrar General. SRS Bulletin. Volume 42, No. 1. New Delhi: India, 2007.
Shobha S, Sharad D. Efficacy of twice weekly iron supplementation in anemic adolescent girls. Indian Pediatrics 2003; 40: 1186-1190.
Sungthong R, Mo-Suwan L, Chongsuvivat Wong. Once weekly is superior to daily iron supplementation on height gain but not on Haematological improvement among school children in Thailand. Journal of Nutrition 2002; 132: 418-422.
Agrawal KN, Gomber S, Bisht H, Sorn M. Anemia prophylaxis in adolescent school girls by weekly or daily iron folate supplementation. Indian Pediatrics, 2003: 40: (17) 296-301.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The authors retain the copyright of their article, with first publication rights granted to Medsci Publications.
