A Study Of 370 Live Births In A Rural Area Of Punjab

The study was carried out in12 Anganwadi areas of ferozepur District in Punjab to know about the various aspects of reproduction of the population. A total of 13, 782 population was covered. The sex ratio of the surveyed population was 900.7 females to 1000 males. The crude Birth rate of the area came to be 26.83 per 1000 population. In 94.87% of the births, the delivery occurred at the completion of 36 weeks of Gestation period & majority of the births (91.63%) occurred to the mothers in the age group of 20 to 35 years . 24.86% of the children were born to the mothers with parity of five and above. 46.75% of the births took place between the months of July and October. 96.22% of the deliveries were conducted at home and majority (93.79%) of the mothers utilized the services of indigenous dais( 73.52% of trained dais and 20.27% of untrained dais) for the conduction of delivery

A community-based case–control study to investigate the role of iron deficiency in the persistence of goiter

Objectives: To find out the magnitude of iron deficiency anemia in the age group of 6–12 years and investigate the role of iron deficiency as a possible contributor to endemic goiter in school children in Ambala. Materials and Methods: The present study was conducted as a subset of a cross-sectional study among 2700 children from 6 to 12 years of age to find out the prevalence of goiter. All the subjects who were found to be suffering from goiter in the cross-sectional study were enrolled in the case–control study as cases and were compared with age- and sex-matched controls (children without goiter) from the same cohort. The study was conducted from February 2011 to January 2012. Results: Out of total, goiter was observed in 12.6% of the subjects. Urinary iodine excretion was found to be <100 μg/L in 57 (10.5%) children. Mean hemoglobin (Hb) level of the study population was 11.9 g/dL. It was noted that 71% of the goitrous children had anemia (Hb <12 g/dL) as compared to 63.7% of the control group. Serum ferritin (SF) was <15 ng/mL in 70% of the children. The mean ± standard deviation of SF in the goitrous and nongoitrous children was 19.65 ± 32.51 μg/L and 27.55 ± 21.07 μg/L, respectively (P = 0.012). Conclusion: The findings in the study suggest that iron deficiency anemia in children is contributing toward the persistence of goiter in the postiodization phase