Three days a week I will have one interpreter and thumbpricks to draw blood. We will be conducting surveys at selected public and private schools. The survey includes questions such as: Are you in the habit of drinking non-treated water? How often do you wear footwear outside? Are you in the habit of eating uncooked rice or substances like chalk?
We are testing for anemia. The prevalence of anemia in India, especially among adolescent females, is quite staggering. In rural areas, the estimates for percentage of adolescent males and females with anemia reach fifty-five percent. Anemia is caused by iron deficiency most often due to poor nutrition (iron is most often found in green, leafy vegetables), hookworms when persons do not wear foorwear, and excess menstrual bleeding among females. The consequences of anemia include stunted growth, low energy, premature birth, and perinatal and maternal mortality.
What does anemia have to do with AIDS? Almost all of the patients that we treat for HIV are anemic, making them even more susceptible to sickness. Also, a few of the primary anti-retroviral drugs that we use have the side-effect of causing anemia, which makes the use of those drugs very hazardous to patients already anemic.
After conducting the survey, we hope to have a better grasp of the primary, local causes for anemia. Also, we presume that the results will reveal that the rate of anemia at government schools is much greater than that of the private schools. Should this be the case, I will follow-up with a paper which illustrates this inequality. It is our ultimate goal to pressure the Namakkal government schools into supplying their students with an iron supplement as a part of the lunch program. We start tomorrow.
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