Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To assess if a weekly dose of iron and folic acid along with vitamin C, in the workplace would reduce the prevalence of anaemia. METHODOLOGY: A multi-pronged intervention was carried out to reduce the prevalence of anaemia among workers of 7 apparel manufacturing factories using a regime consisting of a supervised single dose of albendazole (400mg) followed by a weekly dose of dried ferrous sulphate (150mg), folic acid (0.5mg) and vitamin C (100mg). Workers were provided information on the causes of anaemia and its prevention. The total duration of the intervention was 16 weeks. Haemoglobin levels of a randomly selected sample of workers were tested before and after the intervention using a computerized non-cyan-meth-haemoglobin method. RESULTS: Of the 10810 workers who were enrolled a sample of 515 workers was randomly selected for the blood investigations. At the end of the intervention (18 weeks after the first blood sample was collected) only 361 out of the 515 who had been enrolled a little more than 16 weeks earlier still remained in the factories and among women 279 out of 385 enrolled were still working in the factories. In the 385 unmatched samples the number of anaemic women had reduced from 141 before the intervention to 79 after - mean haemoglobin increasing from 12.2 to 13.0 (p < 0.001) and in the 279 paired samples prevalence of anaemia had reduced from 105 to 58 - mean haemoglobin increasing from 12.1 to 13.0 (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrated that in resource poor regions, where prevalence of anaemia is high, the workplace may be considered an ideal location to give a weekly supervised dose of iron, folic acid and vitamin C to effectively tackle the problem and probably improve worker efficiency.