The world prevalence of anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years was 29.9 percent in 2019, which is the same as it was in 2005 (Figure 13). There was a slight decrease from 2000 to 2005 (from 31.2 percent in 2000). As for the ECA region, the prevalence of anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years has always been below the world average. However, the region is not making progress; except for slight variations in some years, the prevalence was 17.4 percent in 2000 and remained the same in 2019. In some subregions, such as CIS Europe and Ukraine (20.4 percent in 2019), the Western Balkans (22.8 percent in 2019), Central Asia (28.1 percent in 2019) and the Caucasus (30.4 percent in 2019), the prevalence was higher than the regional average. In the Caucasus, the prevalence of anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years was higher than the global average.
The country-level data presented in Figure 14 show that 18 countries made some progress in reducing the prevalence of anaemia, in particular Uzbekistan (‑21.7 percentage points), Kazakhstan (‑6.2 percentage points), Turkmenistan (‑6.1 percentage points), Azerbaijan (‑5.9 percentage points), Georgia (‑4.0 percentage points) and Armenia (‑3.1 percentage points). The other 30 ECA countries saw increases in the prevalence of anaemia, in particular Ukraine (+4.2 percentage points) and North Macedonia (+3.5 percentage points). In addition, three countries had values in 2019 that were higher than the world average: Kyrgyzstan (35.8 percent), Tajikistan (35.2 percent) and Azerbaijan (35.1 percent).