Objectives
Child anemia prevalence is high in India despite the program in place. Present study aims to answer whether is it feasible to provide a package of services needed to reduce anemia in rural area of UP, India? Is it possible to implement the program within the system? Can that reduce child anemia?
Methods
Anemia control in young children (6-23 months) calls for iron supplementation, improved complementary feeding practice, controlling infections and improving iron store of mothers during pregnancy. Present study trained 493 frontline health workers of Gyanpur block of UP, India having a population of 265000 for all the service delivery and strengthened the system to improve supply of medicines and monitoring the program. Handia was the control block with similar demography.Supply situation was included in monthly meeting discussionsBaseline and endline survey were conducted by two stage cluster sampling first 30 villages selected proportionate to size and then 10 children from each village.
Results
62% of children in study group received IFA syrup against 2% in control group; 92% of those receiving iron syrup actually consumed it. Frontline workers delivered services. Thirteen percent reduction was achieved in anemia (84.7% to 71.8%) study block vs 2% (92.1% to 89.8%) in control block.
Conclusions
It is feasible to reach out with package of services for anemia control in UP, India within the system and actually reduce anemia prevalence by capacity building and system strengthening. Challenges for supply and monitoring needs to be overcome
