Prevalence of iron deficiency anemia in Asian female population and human development index (HDI): an ecological study

OBJECTIVE: Anemia is a major problem in developing countries, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between the human development index (HDI) and the prevalence of anemia among Asian women. METHODS: This was a descriptive-analytic ecological study. The study analyzed data including HDI and prevalence of anemia extracted from the World Bank. The correlation coefficient and analysis of variance were used for data analysis. The significance level was considered to be less than 0.05. Analyses were performed using Stata-14 software. RESULTS: The results revealed that the prevalence of anemia in women of reproductive age (R=−0.626, P<0.001), pregnant women (R=−0.576, P<0.001) and non-pregnant women (R=−0.623, P<0.0001) was significantly negatively correlated with HDI index. In the analysis of HDI components and the prevalence of anemia, a significant negative correlation was observed between the prevalence of anemia and the mean years of schooling, life expectancy at birth, and expected years of schooling indices in all 3 groups of women (non-pregnant, pregnant, and of reproductive age) (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: Since there was a negative correlation between the prevalence of anemia in women and HDI, paying greater attention to factors which influence anemia may contribute to the prevention of anemia in developing countries.