What is It?

Adolescent health or children’s health has definitely improved within the past decade overall.  It has been estimated that in 2012, “1.3 million adolescents died, down from 1.5 million in 2000. The mortality rate decreased from 126 to 111 per 100 000 between 2000 and 2012. This modest decline of about 12% continues the trend of the past 50 years. Mortality rates dropped in all regions” (World Health Organization, 2014).  A recent article written by GBD 2017 also goes over children mortality rates improving, deaths have decreased 51.7% from 13.77 million in 1990 to 6.64 million in 2017.  Even with these improvements, there are still plenty of causes of children mortalities and disabilities.  For this project I will be discussing iron-deficient anemia, it has been found that for all children and adolescents, “only 1 primarily nonfatal disease ranked in the top 10 of global DALYs: iron-deficient anemia”(GBD, 2017)

            Iron Deficiency Anemia is a common and curable disease found within children.  It arises when the balance of “iron intake, iron stores, and the body’s loss of iron are insufficient to fully support production of erythrocytes. Iron deficiency anemia rarely causes death, but the impact on human health is significant” (Miller, J.L., 2013).  Anemia is “prevalent condition that goes under recognized and under treated, yet still carries substantial costs for payers and is a burden on the health and quality of life of those diagnosed” (Smith, 2010).  It is hard to really isolate overall cost in treating any kind of anemia because there are varied settings.  Cost need to consider drug expenses, administration cost, hospital charges, inpatient physician fees, transfusion costs, laboratory testing costs, and indirect costs (Smith, 2010)