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Do cases of anemia increase in Azerbaijan?

10 December 2015 10:00 (UTC+04:00)
Do cases of anemia increase in Azerbaijan?

By Amina Nazarli

Anemia is defined as a decrease in the amount of red blood cells or hemoglobin in the blood, and affected 24,769 Azerbaijani children aged under 18 in 2014, according to the State Statistics Committee.

Earlier in November, the state statistics showed an increasing incidence of anemia in children aged under 18 in Azerbaijan, rising from 20, 302 people in 2013 and exceeding 24,000 last year.

Anemia is not strictly a disease, but a disorder. It is often a byproduct of other diseases that disrupt the body's ability to produce healthy red blood cells.

Hematologist Chingiz Asadov told AzerNews that this figure, actually, does not mean the growing cases of anemia in the country.

“Under the governmental program, the Health Ministry conducts a massive medical examination of children. That enables to detect the disorder on time,” the hematologist said.

According to data fixed in 2014, the cases of anemia account for 1 percent per each 100,000 people in the country.

That indicates that the situation with this disorder is not acute in Azerbaijan, since the figure under 5 percent is considered "normal" in medicine.

During the Soviet period the situation was very disappointing, the hematologist added, noting that the monitoring in the country’s Gabala region revealed about 40 percent of cases of anemia in children.

Asadov believes that the percentage of the people suffering from anemia depends on the development of the country. “Increase of GDP in the country every year rules out the risk of anemia for the population,” he believes.

Iron-deficiency anemia, in which blood lacks adequate healthy red blood cells, is one of the most common type of anemia in the country.

The hematologist said that it is impossible to treat this decease without drug therapy and pharmaceuticals containing iron is the very remedy for iron-deficiency anemia.

He added, that the drugs should also be adjusted with the diet by eating foods that contain large amounts of iron, such as red meat and liver.

Hereditary anemia, calling thalassemia is another form of anemia and some 8 percent of Azerbaijanis are the carriers of this gene.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

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