Anaemia in Booked and Unbooked Pregnant Women at Term in a Lower Middle Income Country: A Hospital Based Study

Background: Anaemia is a severe public health problem affecting both developed and developing countries. It is most commonly associated with poverty, poor nutritional status and lack of family planning and antenatal care services especially in the third world countries. Objectives: To investigate the burden of anaemia in pregnant women at term presenting to Central Park Teaching Hospital and to evaluate the association of severity of anaemia with booking status and parity. Methods: This is a cross sectional study in which purposive convenience sampling technique was used for data collection of the anaemic women at term (gestation age ≥ 37 weeks). Hemoglobin level, degree of anaemia, booking status and parity status of the study population were obtained from patient records. SPSS version 27 was used. Pearson’s Chi-square test was used to check the association between variables. The p-value of ≤ 0.05 being considered statistically significant. Results: The frequency of anaemia at term was found to be 49.6% in our study. Anaemia was more common among multigravida (59.4%) and in booked patients (65.3%) with statistically significant differences. More patients with severe anaemia (71.4%) concluded their pregnancy on C-section as compared to patients with mild (54.8%) or moderate (71.0%) anaemia however, this difference was statistically insignificant. Conclusion: Anemia remains a significant health problem among pregnant women at term in this lower middle–income setting. Higher frequency was observed among multigravida women and those who were booked, indicating that routine antenatal care alone may not be sufficient to prevent anemia.