By – Chingnunganba Yumnam
While we were children we learnt by heart that Health is Wealth. We also memorized our parent advising us on what to eat and what not to. This way we learnt by heart many lessons relating to health without fully understanding the meaning and the implications of what we had heard. With the university level education coming towards completion and the various assignments being having written, the meaning and the implications of what we had leant as kids are increasingly becoming clear. In fact, we now want the health and wealthiness of our parents and brothers and sisters; we do no have the concept of cousins in our Manipur society.
In a recent familiarization with application of Econometrics, I was going through the Reports of the National Family Health Surveys. While going NFHS 4 (2015-2016) and NFHS 5(2019 -2021), I got an idea of what has been the anaemia scenario in our home State during 2015-2021. The data do not give us an encouraging picture; the data reveal that pregnant women aged 15-49 years had a 26% being anaemic in 2015, but rose to 32.4% in 2021 showing a rising trend of pregnant women suffering from anaemia. As in the case of pregnant women, the case of the children aged 6-59 months the incidence rose from 23.9% in 2015 to 42.8% in 2021. These trends give us clear signs of both pregnant women and children of vulnerability to anaemia.
Let us understand what is the problem we are talking about. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines anaemia as “the presence or absence of red blood cells, or a low haemoglobin content, which results in the blood’s ability to carry oxygen throughout the body falling below a specified cut-off value”. It can be caused by low nutritional intake (iron, vitamin B12, vitamin A and even infections like malaria. Research shows that exposure to severe anaemia reduces human capital formation for children and poor performance of children in schools, and for women it increases the risk of maternal mortality, cardiac issues and higher vulnerability to infections for pregnant women.
Now the questions remain as to why anaemia still persists with rising incidence in Manipur. How can it be tackled? Despite various health schemes and programmes, anaemia continues to be prevalent especially among the middle-income family and households below the poverty line.
Addressing the problem requires increase in Government health spending both from the central and the state governments to improve nutritional programmes. This increased health spending by the government can help reduce Out of Pocket Expenditure (OOPE) by the targeted households and prevent the households from falling into poverty trap. Tackling anaemia is not just a health priority but also an investment in human capital and foster long term economic development. Thus the attention of the Government is necessarily an important one.