Community Study of Anemia in a Village of Nanyo (Southern Area), Ehime Prefecture / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

Today, rural communities in Japan are on the brink of a ruin, and the rapidly deteriorating social conditions there have exerted a harmful influence on the health of farmers.<BR>During the work for protecting health of the inhabitants in a village of Ehime Prefecture, it was noticed that a considerably low level of community health has reflected on the high frequency of anemia.<BR>It is noteworthy that most of the anemic cases result from overwork and unbalanced nutrition caused by poverty.<BR>In our last investigation on 1389 inhabitants, anemia was found in 28.0% of the male adults, 25.7% of the female adults, 40% of the old people. The mean hemoglobin level was 14.58±1.63 in the male adults, and 12.57±1.51 in the female adults.<BR>It is urgently necessary to take effective measures to correct the situation.<BR>As causal factors, we can enumerate distorted dietary life, overwork, and physiological phenomena peculiar to women, such as pregnancy and delivery, in the case of women; and overwork, a general decline of bone marrow functions, and the secondary anemia caused by other diseases in the case of old people. The establishment of a system of community health control is needed more than anything else.