Prevalence & consequences of anaemia in pregnancy.

This is a rather comprehensive review of the prevalence of iron-deficiency anemia in pregnant women in India and of decade-long efforts at correcting it. It brings out the difficulty of correcting the anemia with oral iron, due to poor compliance, even under supervision, leading to their current plan of intramuscular iron injections, again with modest effectiveness and with immediate side effects that are not negligible; there is no mention of the potential for sarcoma development at the injection site. Surprisingly, there is no discussion of the possibility of correcting the anemia with intravenous iron, a method shown to be effective.

– Alice Maniatis