Section 2.4

Chapter 2 Sustainable Development Goal 2.2: Malnutrition

2.4 ANAEMIA AMONG WOMEN AGED 15 TO 49 YEARS

Little progress has been made against the World Health Assembly (WHA) target to reduce anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years by 50 percent (Table 8). No country in Asia and the Pacific is on course to meet the WHA target. The prevalence of anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years (SDG Indicator 2.2.3) in Asia and the Pacific was 32.9 percent in 2019. The prevalence was highest in Southern Asia, where almost half of women aged 15 to 49 had anaemia (48.2 percent). This is a marginal fall from 49.4 percent in 2000 indicating a singular lack of progress. In Oceania excluding Australia and New Zealand, 33.9 percent of women aged 15 to 49 years were anaemic, followed by 27.2 percent in South-eastern Asia and 16.1 percent in Eastern Asia.

TABLE 8.

Prevalence of anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years (percent)

	2000	2005	2010	2015	2019
World	31.2	29.9	28.6	28.8	29.9
Asia and the Pacific	34.2	32.5	31.2	31.6	32.9
Eastern Asia	22.2	18.7	16.0	15.6	16.1
Oceania excluding Australia and New Zealand	34.4	33.6	32.8	33.1	33.9
South-eastern Asia	31.4	27.9	25.3	25.6	27.2
Southern Asia	49.4	49.1	48.5	47.8	48.2

Note: Please refer to Annex IV for the country coverage of this report. In particular, Central Asia and Western Asia are not included.
Source: WHO. 2021. Global anaemia estimates, Edition 2021. In: Global Health Observatory (GHO) data repository. Geneva, Switzerland. Cited 25 May 2021. www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/prevalence-of-anaemia-in-women-of-reproductive-age-(-)

FIGURE 7.

Prevalence of anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years in Asia and the Pacific by country

Across individual countries (Figure 7), the prevalence of anaemia among women continues to be uniformly high (>10 percent). The average for as many as four countries has climbed in the period from 2000 to 2019. The reduction in values for other countries is mostly in the zero to 25 percent range, which is far from the targeted 50 percent reduction. Relatively richer (high- and middle-income) and developed economies in the region are also struggling to reach this target.