Prevalence and determinants of anaemia among children aged O-59 months in a rural region of Armenia: a case-control study

Objective: Despite the trend of increasing prevalence of childhood anaemia in Armenia, no studies exploring its risk factors have been conducted in the country. The present study aimed to investigate the prevalence and determinants of childhood anaemia in rural Armenia. Design: Blood Hb level was measured among a representative sample of children using the HemoCue Hb201+ analyser. The revealed cases with anaemia were compared with randomly selected non-anaemic controls. Mothers of cases and controls were interviewed. Logistic and linear regression models were fitted to identify the risk factors of anaemia and low Hb level, respectively. Setting: Talin communities, Aragatsotn Province, Armenia. Subjects: Children under 5 years of age in Talin region. Results: Of the 729 studied children, 32.4 % were anaemic with 14.7 % having moderate/severe anaemia. Infants were the most affected group with 51.1 % being anaemic before 6 months and 67.9 % at 6-12 months of age. Fitted regression models identified the following predictors of anaemia: younger age, male gender, shorter birth length, anaemia during pregnancy, lower meal frequency per day, lack of meat in the diet, using dung cakes for heating and living in a community that received an incomplete set of nutrition interventions. Conclusions: The study identified several modifiable risk factors that could be targeted to reduce childhood anaemia in rural Armenia and, possibly, in rural areas in other low-/middle-income countries. The suggested interventions include prevention and treatment of anaemia during pregnancy, provision of adequate complementary feeding to children with inclusion of meat in their daily diet and reduction of their exposure to biomass fuel smoke.