Nutritional Anaemia and Its Control

Key points

• • Nutritional anaemia is a low blood haemoglobin caused mainly by a lack of iron, and sometimes folate or vitamin B12, which are needed to make red cells.
• • It is very common in young children and in pregnant and menstruating women, because their need for iron is high.
• • It causes tiredness, pallor, breathlessness and poor concentration, and in pregnancy it raises the risk to both mother and baby.
• • Control combines eating iron-rich foods, giving iron and folic acid to those at risk, fortifying foods, and treating causes such as worm infestation.
• • Public-health programmes provide iron and folic acid to schoolchildren, pregnant women and others as part of anaemia control.