Knowledge regarding of Iron Deficiency Anemia among Adolescent Girls of Chitwan

Abstract

Growth spurts and menarche in adolescent Girls increase iron requirements. Iron deficiency anemia, one of the common nutritional deficiency condition of adolescent girls, is related to poor dietary intake and lack of iron supplementation puts them into the high risk group. The objective of this study is to find out the “Knowledge regarding Iron Deficiency Anemia among Adolescent girls. Descriptive cross-sectional study design was used for the study. Among the 5 government school of this Municipality, three were selected by simple random method and among those schools probability proportional sampling was used for the selection of the adolescent girls of the schools. Data were collected from 156 adolescent school girls through self-administered structured questionnaire developed by researcher and analysis was done using SPSS version 20. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used for the analysis. This study revealed that more than half (53.2%) of the adolescents girls had low knowledge regarding iron deficiency anemia and remaining had just moderate knowledge. There was significant association between age (p=0.03), education (p= 0.001) and father’s occupation (p=0.004) with level of knowledge on iron deficiency anemia. The study concludes that adolescent girls have low knowledge regarding iron deficiency anemia, so school administration need to plan and organize anemia preventive campaign and provide information, education and communication (IEC) materials and screening services related to anemia.