Children under Five Years Old with Anemia in Al- Najaf Province, Iraq

Abstract

One of the most serious public health problems affecting people in both developing and industrialized countries is anemia. 3.5 billion people were reported in developing countries were anemic. This study aims to determine the anemia causes among children under five years in Al-Najaf province. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Al- Furat Al Awsat hospital and Al- Zahra Teaching Hospital for period 3/12/2017- 28/2/ 2018in Al Najaf Al- Ashraf province, Iraq. The sample of this study was selected using simple random sampling. The list of children's names was used to determine the sample.  The respondents were the children who were diagnosed with the anemic condition by a pediatrics physician at the place of study. The findings of this study show that 50.9% of respondents were males. Most of them were living in low family income. The primary and secondary levels of education were the level of education of most parents. 63.2% of children were living in urban areas. On the other hand, 18.7% of children have infected with parasitic and 24% of them had chronic diarrhea. 29.2% had a family history with anemia 35.7% of the study sample had anemia. As for the obstetrical history, the mothers who had anemia during pregnancy were represented 60.2%. 31% had bleeding during pregnancy and 35.7% had multiple pregnancy. Finally, this study found that there was a multiple correlation between dependent and independent variables.