Maternal Anemia: A Village Level Empirical Observation in Assam

The International Safe Motherhood Initiative Conference, launched in 1987 at Nairobi, Kenya established Safe Motherhood Initiative to address issues of maternal health that had long been neglected. However, some issues of maternal health particularly maternal anemia have hitherto received very little attention and priority in these agendas. Maternal anemia is directly and indirectly related with adverse outcome of pregnancy during and after delivery. It increases the incidence of high-risk pregnancy, still birth, infant death, and maternal mortality. There are numbers of initiative from the Central Government to reduce maternal anemia through antenatal care, taking iron and folic acid supplements. Although such intervention has achieved some progress in targeting the pregnant women, maternal anemia is still a widespread public health challenge. This chapter identifies the context-specific causes of maternal anemia that would help in taking appropriate preventive measures to combat anemia in a particular geographical arena rather than universal, “one-size-fits-all” type intervention. In other words, it will help in channelizing scarce resources according to the local needs. The current work that is based on empirical observation provides insights on significant influence of social contexts and dietary intake on hemoglobin concentration among pregnant women in different sets of geographical location within districts of Assam. Therefore, examining the socioeconomic context-specific causes of maternal anemia is helpful in taking effective preventive measures and a better target for improvement of hemoglobin level among the pregnant women. In this regards, food-based approach can be considered as one of the effective intervention for multi-nutritional benefits.