BACKGROUND
Anemia is a major public health problem in developing countries. It is the most common nutritional disease in pregnancy with significant adverse impact on maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. In 2019, the global prevalence of anemia in pregnant woman was estimated to be 36.5% (1). As per recent NFHS 5 report the prevalence of anaemia in pregnant women in India is 45.7% and 54.3% in urban and rural areas respectively(2) The important causes of anemia in developing countries include poor nutrition, inadequate iron in diet, poor absorption of iron due to hookworm infestation, diarrhea,, suboptimal screening and treatment and too early, too soon and too many child births. Routine antenatal and postnatal iron supplementation free of cost is an important Government initiative to reduce anemia in pregnancy. Despite this, anemia remains unabated due to poor compliance to iron supplementation by beneficiaries and lack of commitment among the health care providers to screen and treat pregnant women for anemia. Covid 19 pandemic further disrupted the antenatal care services due to lockdowns and related travel restrictions, loss of jobs and related financial constraints and reluctance of pregnant women to visit health facilities for the fear of contracting infection (3). The lower socioeconomic strata were the worst affected. As with previous epidemics there was a sudden increase in demand and redirection of the workforce towards the management of COVID pandemic and resultant reduction in provision of routine health services.(4) Although COVID-19 disease itself did not directly increase the maternal mortality but resulted in unsupervised pregnancies adversely affecting maternal health. (5, 6)
This study was initiated to study the impact of COVID 19 pandemic on the prevalence, clinical profile and pregnancy outcomes of women with severe anaemia