Prevalence of anaemia among selected elderly

Present study was conducted to assess the prevalence of anaemia among 600 elderly population residing in urban (200), rural (200) and tribal area (200) of Nanded district of Marathwada region of Maharashtra state, India. Daily food intake of each selected elderly was recorded with the help of two days dietary recall method and weighment method. By using food consumption table of ICMR (Gopalan et al., 2004) the nutrient intake of the elderly was calculated. To find out the percent adequacy in consumption food intake was compared with balanced diet and nutrient intake was compared with the ICMR recommended dietary allowances (ICMR 2012). To judge the extent of prevalence of anemia among elderly, haemoglobin content was determined by Cyanomethyloglobin method (Crossby et al., 1954). Based on the determined values of haemoglobin content were classified into four groups (ICHS, 1986 and NCCS, 1994), as normal (>12 g Hb/dl of blood), mild (>10-12 g Hb/dl of blood), moderate (7-10 g Hb/dl of blood) and sever (<7 g Hb/dl of blood) aneamia. Result of the study revealed that, calculated percent adequacy of cereals, pulses, green leafy vegetables, roots and tubers, other vegetables, fruits, fats and oil, milk and milk products and sugar and jagerry was 97.88, 74.84, 54.85, 48.05, 20.08, 15.39, 62.96, 34.79 and 83.3 percent respectively. Elderly belonging to high income group had more percent adequacy of all nutrients i.e. fat (136.77 %), phosphorus (115.01 %), vitamin c (91.67 %), energy (74.80 %), protein (73.55 %), carbohydrate (66.25 %), calcium (52.71 %) and iron (50.47 %). The haemoglobin content of elderly male (9.86±0.62) was found to be more than elderly female (8.12±0.58) with statistically significant difference. The equal percent of urban (22.50 %) and rural (25 %) elderly were suffering with mild and moderate grade of aneamia.