Prevalence of Micronutrient Deficiencies among Self Help Group Women and the Impact of Interventions

Abstract

Micronutrient deficiencies have huge impact on health of women and various strategies are newlinebeing adopted to improve the condition. One thousand Self Help Group women aged between 30- newline40 years from 200 SHGs were selected from two Blocks of Coimbatore District, Tamil Nadu. newlineSocio-economic status, dietary background and nutritional knowledge of all the women were newlineassessed. Anthropometric measurements, clinical examination and biochemical estimation was newlinecarried out to identify the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies. With the help of 24 hour newlinedietary recall method the dietary intake of the women was found out. In order to correct the newlinemicronutrient deficiency and to improve the nutritional knowledge of the SHG women newlinesupplementation and nutrition education were planned. The effect of supplementation was newlineevaluated by comparing the anthropometric, clinical and biochemical parameters and nutritional newlineknowledge of the subjects before and after supplementation. Majority of the women belonged to newlinelower socioeconomic status and their dietary practices were not satisfactory. The overall newlinenutritional knowledge of the women on foods, nutrients and their importance in preventing newlinedeficiency diseases was found to be not satisfactory. The intake of micronutrient rich foods was newlinefound to be inadequate and the major micronutrients like vitamin A, iron and calcium was also newlinefound to be very less. Sixty five per cent of the SHG women were anaemic. About 8 per cent of newlinethe women had very low serum calcium levels of 7.0 to 8.0 mg/dl. Supplementation of the newlinenutritious mixes to the selected SHG women with low serum calcium levels and anaemic women newlineshowed a significant increase in haemoglobin, serum iron, serum calcium levels (Plt0.01) and newlineimproved their overall health status. Nutrition education along with supplementation about newlinenutrition, health, deficiency diseases and its consequences showed improvement in their newlineknowledge, attitude and practice scores. newlineObjectives: newlineBaseline objectives newlineTo collect information on the general profile of selected SH