Concern on prevalence of anaemia in pregnant & lactating women in India.

Agarwal et al in their article published in August 2006 issue of IJMR compared the prevalence of anaemia as measured by the HemoCue method in the 1998-1999 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2) with anaemia estimates in the same enumeration areas in seven states using the indirect cyanmethaemoglobin laboratory method [using dried blood spots (DBS) on filter paper]. They found that the prevalence of anaemia was substantially higher in their study than in NFHS-2. The authors suggest that the HemoCue underestimates anaemia prevalence in pregnant and lactating women. However, many scientific studies have found the HemoCue analyzer to give accurate results, comparable to estimates from more sophisticated laboratory instruments. The improved HemoCue Hb 201+ analyzer used in NFHS-3 has been validated against major automatic cell counters, and has been found to agree well with all tested systems.