Anemia

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Women experienced greater life expectancy than men and as a result they comprise majority of older adults. Consequently, older women exhibit higher health service utilization rates than older men. Anemia is common in elderly and its prevalence increases with age (Amia et al., 2001). The function of some organs and system is decreased by aging process. Age related declines in gastrointestinal and bone marrow functional reserve have been found to occur in elderly. The elderly have dercreased physical activity, changed dietary pattern and in developing countries,  lowered food supply due to socio economic factors. This population group also has increased frequency of inflammatory processes. These factors make elderly more prone to develop anemia (Olivares et al., 2000). Anemia should not be acepted as an inevitable consequence of aging. Although WHO has not given cut off values of anemia for elderly, most of the studies recommend use of reference values for hemoglobin concentration for older individuals same as adults. Prevance of anemia in older individuals is about 50% in developed countries and 12% in developing countries (WHO, 2000). Iron deficiency anemia is the second most common cause of anemia in elderly. A study carried out by Argyriadrou et al. (2001), in Greece on subjects aged 65 years revealed that the prevalence proportions of possible cognitive impairment among anemic and non-anemic males were 55.6% and 34.4% respectively. The corresponding proportions in females were 47.5% and 40.1% respectively. Supplementation with medicinal iron is short term strategy to combat IDA. There is need to further formulate and see the effect of IFA supplementation on cognitive and physical performance of elderly women. Therefore, in the present study iron folic acid was supplemented to the anemic elderly women for a period of six weeks. Usual recommended daily dose of 50 to 100 mg three times a day or a single dose of 325 mg tablet of iron sulphate may minimize the side effects and improve the compliance in elderly (Smith, 2000).

The present study aimed to investigate the impact of NHE given to the patients and controls in terms of knowledge retention and practices. Thus in light of this background, the broad objective of this study was to assess the nutrition, diet and disease profile of elderly anemic women (aged 60 years and above) with and without intervention with iron folic acid supplementation residing in Baroda city.