The Estimation of Haemoglobin Status among Children of Pune Slums

The people living in slum area lead their life in a simple way because of very poor economic status. Especially children get affected very easily with various infectious diseases because of unhygienic environment and lack of basic awareness. Poor nutritional habits make the children and women anaemic with severe grades of malnutrition. Keeping these points in view, the present study was carried out to check the haemoglobin status of children in six slums of Pune city. Haemoglobin estimation was carried out on 1020 children (boys-501 and girls-519) of which, just 14.90% of children were normal i.e. above 11gms. Around 54% of children were found mildly anaemic, 20% with moderate anaemic and around 11% were severe anaemic. Sex wise comparison showed, higher percent of boys (18%) were falling in normal category than girls (12%). Under severe anaemia, 16% of girls and 5% of boys were found in this category. The reason behind less normal cases and more anaemic conditions are mainly because of poverty, lower socio-economic status, poor hygienic environment and malnutrition.