At the same time our data showed a negative association
between anemia and children’s BMI, which is inconsistent with
findings from another study that showed a positive relation
between overweight and anemia.13
Our data showed a significant positive association between
breast feeding and anemia after adjusting for confounding factors.
This finding supports the finding from Timor-Leste and
Brazil where breast feeding, practices for more than 6 months
were significantly associated with the high level of hemoglobin
concentration.15
Types of weaning food are another associated factor. A
child who had cereal alone or combined with fruits and vegetables
as weaning food has 3.5 chance to be anemic than a
child who had meat as a weaning food16 as it contains 40%
of highly absorbable heme-iron.17 Based on the concept that
child’s health reflects the situation of his family, it is highly theoretically
possible that a child would present anemia if any
member of his family especially the mother were anemic. Such
association was found in our study. Maternal anemia had a
greater correlation with child anemia which corroborates with
findings in other studies.15,18
In the multiple logistic regression analysis and after adjusting
for other factors, mother’s age and number of children
were significantly associated with child’s anemia. Child of
mother aged less than 30 years was more prone to anemia than
children of older mothers. This association has also been found