Abstract:
Abstract
Generating accurate epidemiological data on the magnitude of anemia in malnourished children is a vital step for health
policymakers. Therefore, this study is aimed to synthesize the overall magnitude of anemia in African malnourished preschool children. We have searched the databases PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar,
and Google to identify relevant articles. Joana Brigg’s Institute critical appraisal tool was used to assess the quality of
articles. A random-effects model was applied to estimate the pooled prevalence of anemia in malnourished children.
The I2 statistics were used to examine heterogeneity among the included studies. In the presence of heterogeneity,
a subgroup analysis has been used. The funnel plot analysis and Egger’s tests were used to investigate the presence of
publication bias. A total of 15 articles with 12,211 study participants were included in this study. Anemia was observed
in 57.53% (95% CI: 47.05, 68.01) of African malnourished pre-school children. Moreover, the prevalence of anemia was
58.52% (95% CI: 43.04, 73.81) and 56.18% (95% CI: 40.24, 72.13) in HemoCue and auto-machine diagnosis method of
anemia, respectively. This review showed that the magnitude of anemia was high among African malnourished pre-school
children. Therefore, planning preventive measures to decrease anemia and its complications in malnourished children in
Africa is an important step
