Supplementation Effect of Iron and Folic Acid Capsule With and Without Thandai on Anaemic Adolescent Girls

Nutritional problem of adolescent girls are common throughout the country. They encounter a series of serious nutritional challenges not only affecting their growth and development but also their livelihood as adults. Furthermore nutritional status of girls has important implication in terms of physical work capacity and adverse reproductive outcome. Therefore, the present investigation was undertaken to study the supplementation impact of iron and folic acid capsule with and without thandai on anemic adolescent girls. Thandai was prepared by grinding germinated groundnut seeds with jaggery and black pepper. Fifty-four anaemic girls (age, 15-18 yr) were selected and divided randomly into three groups; A , B and C. Each group contained 18 girls. Thandai along with Cofol-Z capsule (iron + folic) given to the subjects of group A whereas to the subjects of B group, only Cofol-Z capsule was given . The subjects of group C served as control. Supplementation was continued for six weeks. Questionnaire regarding general information was filled up. Hb content was measured at 0, 3 and 6 week of supplementation. One way ANOVA was used for testing the variation among all groups by using computer software (SPSS-Version 8.0). All the subjects exhibited varied symptoms of anaemia. On supplementation, significant (p<0.05) improvement was found in mean Hb value of was three times higher in subjects of experimental group A (21.20%) than subjects of experimental group B (6.87 %). Thus iron and folic acid supplementation with thandai proved to be more efficacious in combating the problem of anaemia during adolescence.