Iron deficiency can cause anaemia

Let us read a story about anaemia and try to find out how it affects us.

Sowmya is 13 years old, and lives in Pipaliya village. She studies in the 7th standard in the village school. Her parents work as farm labourers. She takes care of a number of household chores before going to school – filling water, sweeping, washing utensils, etc. When it’s time to go to the school she eats a roti or just drinks a cup of tea and rushes to the school. She is good at sports and often wins the races. But for the last few weeks, she has been getting tired easily. She doesn’t feel hungry either. She doesn’t feel like doing any work after waking up in the morning. She has also not been able to concentrate on her studies in the class. One day while playing at school, her head started to spin and she started to black out. She couldn’t play any longer and sat down. One of her friends fetched some water and another went to call the teacher. Sushila Madam checked the colour of her eyelids and tongue. They looked really pale. The teacher suspected that Sowmya has anaemia.

 

A few days later, Sushila Madam arranged for a discussion on anaemia. She checked the eyelids and tongue of every student in the class. Nearly 12 of the 30 students in the class had pale eyelids and tongues. Sushila Madam knew that these could be signs of blood deficiency.

 

The teacher described other signs of blood deficiency. Several students shared their experiences. Najnin said that her back and shins ache in the morning. Ajay said that his mother works a lot and eats less, and hence she is weak.
 

The teacher said that these are all signs of iron deficiency in the blood. Protein and iron are necessary in our diet for our body to make healthy blood cells. The students gave quick replies to the question of where we can get protein from – pulses, legumes, milk, meat, eggs, fish, etc. But they didn’t know which food items contain iron.

 

Then the teacher asked the students to bring some raw food items the next day, from those in the list below. They would be conducting an experiment to find out which of these foods contain iron.

Make a guess as to which of these items will contain more iron.