Prevalence of anemia among pregnant women visiting Western Regional Hospital, a tertiary care Centre of Western Nepal.

Abstract

Introduction : Anemia in pregnancy is a major health problem and an important cause of adverse feto-ma- ternal outcome. Nutritional anemia chiefly iron de- ficiency anemia is common cause in the majority of pregnancy in Nepal and shares a major burden of co-morbidity in pregnancy. In addition, with the easy access to the health care facilities for antenatal check- up and adequate supply of supplements like iron and folic acid in recent years there has been some im- provement in the prevalence of anemia in pregnancy. So, this study was conducted to identify the preva- lence of anemia during pregnancy in recent context.

Materials and Methods: The cross section- al study included 609 pregnant patients. Random sampling method was used to enroll participants who presented to antenatal clinic for the first time during first trimester. World Health Organization (2008) criteria was used to diagnose anemia with level below 11 mg/dl considered as anemia and lat- er classified as mild, moderate and severe anemia.

Results: A total of 609 patients wereenrolled for study. Anemia was present in 194 patients (31.85%). Majority of patients 176 (28.89%) had mild anemia followed by moderate anemia 15 (2.46%) and severe anemia 3 (0.5%).

Conclusion: Despite the accessible health care facil- ities for antenatal checkup and easy access to supple- mental iron and folic acid, anemia is still a significant comorbidity among the pregnant women in Pokhara. Hence, further study needs to be conducted involving including larger sample size to precisely identify the prevalence of anemia in pregnancy in Nepalese context.