Improving women's education, health key to solving India's Anaemia problem

Anaemia is widespread in India--58.6% of children, 53.2% of non-pregnant women and 50.4% of pregnant women were found to be anaemic in 2016, as per the NFHS

Improving women’s education could be the single most important intervention to reduce India’s anaemia burden, apart from nutrition and health measures, said a study published in medical journal BMJ Global Health in August 2018.

For the study, researchers from poverty, health and nutrition division of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and other institutions compared two rounds of India’s national family health survey (NFHS) data--2005-06 and 2015-16--and examined trends in anaemia for children six to 24 months old and pregnant and non-pregnant women 15 to 49 years old.