Saturday, July 24, 2010

For those interested in data

Hi all,

I just worked on some of the data related to anemia, and I'm attaching it if you're interested in seeing the results.

The gist of it is this:

1 out of 2 children in Pestel is anemic.  (50%)
Across the board, younger children are likely to be MORE anemic.  This unfortunately makes sense because about 1 out of every 8 children do not make it beyond year 5.  They die from pneumonia, diarrhea, malnutrition primarily. 

The worst region is the island:  80% anemia.   And the degree of anemia is FAR worse.   Anemia is roughly defined as a hemoglobin level less than 11.   The average hemoglobin in the other 5 sections hovers around 11.  You can see from the section graphs, though, that a lot of kids fall below the red line, which is the cut-off for anemia.  The island, on the other hand, AVERAGES 7.9.   That's horrible.  And it will be a focus for 2011.

One goal will be to move as many kids as possible above the red line on the graphs.  We've already started that process with deworming.  Now comes the hard part.

Let me know if you're interested in helping with this.  It'll take quite a comprehensive approach to 'fix' this one.  The impact of anemia on kids' health cannot be overstated.  But in this setting it's symptomatic of something deeper-->malnutrition-->poverty.   

I'm truly thankful to God for this data.  As some of you mentioned, each data point is a child.  For me this is not just 'data'.  These represent kids.

Ben



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