Anemia & its associated factors among pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at Mbagathi County Hospital, Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

Introduction: Anemia is one of the most common nutritional deficiency diseases observed globally. It affects more than a quarter of the world’s population. Globally, 41.8% of pregnant women and close to one third of non-pregnant women (30.2%) are anemic. The paper describes factors associated with anemia in pregnant women at Mbagathi County Hospital which admits many patients coming from Kibera. A low income slum in Nairobi. Kenya.

Objective: The objective was to determine the prevalence of anemia and its associated factors among pregnant women attending antenatal care at Mbagathi County Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.

Methodology: A Hospital based cross-sectional study was conducted from September 01 to October 30, 2016 employing a systematic random sampling method to select participants.

Analysis was done using SPSS version 17.0 to obtain descriptive statistics such as Frequency, Percentage, Mean and Standard deviation. This was used to describe selected variables. Chisquare test and odds ratio (OR) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) was computed to determine the association between INDEPENDENT and DEPENDENT variables. Logistic regression analysis was done to determine factors significantly and independently predicting anemia during pregnancy.

Results: The results revealed the prevalence of anemia among pregnant women to be 40.7% with a significant association of Helminthic infestation and anemia (p =0.003). Education showed statistically significant relationship with anemia (p =0.001). There was a strong association between prevalence of anemia and the dietary practices (p =0.003). Anemia among pregnant women is found to be a severe public health problem, based on the World Health Organization classification of anemia.

Conclusion: Thus, this study concluded that routine iron supplementation in pregnancy and early initiation of antenatal clinic attendance could reduce the prevalence of anemia in pregnancy.

Hence, daily intake of foods rich in iron is recommended for women to reduce prevalence of iron deficiency (anemia) during pregnancy. In fact, girl child education can be used to further mitigate anemia in communities.

Moreover, stringent measures should be taken to control parasitic infestations and other risk factors of anemia amongst women by disseminating Information to the public.