Abstract

Background: Even though anemia was highly targeted in different global strategies, more than one-third of pregnant women were suffering from it and its complications. Besides this, prior trend analysis has not been conducted among pregnant and/or lactating women in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the trend and determinants of anemia among pregnant and/or lactating women in Ethiopia by using 2011 and 2016 Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS).

Method: The study used a cross-sectional analysis of secondary data from the two consecutive EDHS dataset. Pregnant and/or lactating women with a sample size of 6,106 and 5,641 in 2011 and 2016 survey were included in the analysis respectively. The data were analyzed by using Stata/SE version 14.0. Logit based decomposition analysis was done to identify contributing factors for anemia change and statistical significance was determined by using P-value.

Result: The trend of anemia was increased among pregnant and/or lactating women from 19 % in 2011 to 29% in 2016 EDHS. The decomposition analysis indicated that 8% of the overall change in anemia was due to the change in women’s composition. Change in the composition of pregnant and/or lactating women’s characteristics according to region, economic status and tobacco or cigarette use were the major sources of this change. Greater than 90% of the increase in anemia was due to differences in the coefficient. Mostly, the change of behaviors on the Amhara population, those who had a history of terminated pregnancy and use tobacco or cigarette were the source of change.

Conclusion: Anemia among pregnant and/or lactating women was increased against government intervention over the last-half decade in Ethiopia. Programmatic intervention targeting richer, Somali and Dire Dawa region would help to decrease the trend of anemia.

Keywords: Anemia, Trend, Decomposition analysis