Health Knowledge of Pregnant Women on Anemia and its Complication in Pregnancy

Introduction:Anemia is a serious issue of health care and is one of the most important nutritional problems in the world. Knowledge and practices of pregnant women based on their beliefs play an important role in anemia prevention therefore its assessment is necessary Objective:The purpose of study was to determine the prevalence of anemia in pregnant women and their health knowledge and its complication in pregnancy Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 393 pregnant women were selected with nonprobability sampling method and the study was carried out in the first half of year 2013. Questionnaire was used to collect general information and knowledge level assessment regarding four domains of preventive measures, methods, inducing factors, disease symptoms and anemia complication in pregnancy. Blood samples were collected for hemoglobin estimation. Descriptive, Chi-square and t- student test were used for statistical analysis Results:&nbsp;Overall prevalence of anemia among the women was found to be 28.8%. The results have shown relatively moderate levels on prevention methods scores and knowledge of anemia factors, low level knowledge on disease symptoms and moderate level of knowledge on complications. Also there were a statistically significant relationship between the prevalence of anemia and knowledge score on prevention methods, disease symptoms and total knowledge score in pregnant women(p<0.05). Conclusion: According to the finding of this study, prevalence of anemia was very high. It is necessary for health system to properly plan for effective factors to decrease this disease such as people&rsquo;s awareness