Prevalence of Anemia during Pregnancy in Pakistan: Meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: In the 21^st century, anemia is the most common nutritional deficiency globally reported. Anemia affects both genders, male and female, and all age groups. But the main problem is more prevalent among women, which makes it common medical condition in pregnancy. Objective: This study was designed to find the pooled prevalence of anemia during Pregnancy in Pakistan using meta-analysis. Methodology: Studies were searched out using different key words like “Anemia’’, “Pregnant women’’, “anemia and Pregnant women’’, “Anemia during pregnancy’’, “Anemia and Pakistan’’, “Pregnant women and Pakistan’’ and “Hb level’’. The related studies were found by using different search databases, Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus. Studies were included if articles had anemia in their title and had full text available. We excluded review articles and copyright or where permission was required. The pooled prevalence of anemia was found by fixed effect and random effect, forest plot and Funnel plots. Other tests were applied to find heterogeneity and publication bias. We considered I² > 75% to be high heterogeneity. The P-value less or equal 0.05 was considered significant. Results: The results showed the pooled prevalence of anemia among pregnant women was 54.901% using the fixed effect, 62.888% using the random effect. The I² (inconsistency) was found as 99.67%, and Cochran’s Q value was significant (p-value < 0.01) in the heterogeneity test, which showed huge heterogeneity among these studies. In publication bias, significant levels were reported: P = 0.2510 for Egger's test and P = 0.4480 for Begg’s test. Conclusion: This meta-analysis found the highest pooled prevalence of anemia (54.901%) among pregnant women in Pakistan. The health department, policymakers, nutritionists, family doctors, and gynecologists should put a serious focus on reducing anemia among pregnant women.  Keywords: anemia, pregnant women, pregnancy, Pakistan, prevalence, Hb level