A Survey of Iron Supplementation Consumption and its Related Factors in Children Aged 6-24 Months: a Case Study in Ardabil City

Iron is one of the key elements need for physical growth of the body. Iron deficiency anemia is the most common type of anemia and children under 2 years old are the most vulnerable group. The present study is aimed at surveying the use of supplementary iron drops in 6-24months infants in Ardabil district.
An analytical-descriptive study was carried out as a cross-sectional work on 200 infants aged 6-24months. The subjects were selected through cluster sampling and a questionnaire was used for data gathering. Data analysis was done by variance and correlation analysis using SPSS19 with the significant level set at p=0.05.
In general, 53.1% of the mothers used iron drops on regular bases, 36.2% on irregular bases, and 10.7% did not use the drops. Only 13.5% of the mothers had adequate information and 5% had acceptable performance with respect to using iron drops. There were significant relationships between consumption of iron drops and performance, awareness, and place of supplying the drops. The main causes for not using the drops were infant vomiting and mothers’ forgetfulness.
Not using Iron drops and using the drop on irregular bases and low knowledge and practice of mothers on drop consumption implies the necessity for planning to screen infants with anemia and holding training courses for the mothers with low literacy.