Environmental Determinants of Anaemia and Its Spatial Association with Mosquito-Borne Disease Vulnerability among Females and Males Aged 15-49 in Eastern and North-Eastern India

Lobsang Bhutia, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Aparajita Chattopadhyay, International Institute for Population Sciences, India

The macro-environmental factors play a significant role in the population's overall health, yet the contextualization of these factors operating on diseases like anaemia is limited. The study uses the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) to examine the environmental determinants of anaemia and its association with mosquito-borne disease vulnerability among females and males aged 15-49 in Eastern and North-Eastern India. Results show that even after adjusting for major demographic and health factors, the residential environmental factors, such as lower altitudes, higher temperatures, higher rainfall, and experience of more drought episodes in the past, were associated with higher odds of anaemia in both females and males in Eastern and North-Eastern India. The spatial clustering of anaemia prevalence was high over the riverine and humid subtropical regions of Ganga, Brahmaputra and Mahanadi belt for both females and males in the study area. Furthermore, the anaemia clusters were found to be spatially associated with the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) generated mosquito-borne disease vulnerability. The findings highlight the need for integrating environmental and health programs with focused targeted interventions in riverine areas prone to mosquito-borne diseases for addressing anaemia.

Keywords: Population, Environment, and Climate Change, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Gender Dynamics, Health and Morbidity

See extended abstract.