ICMR Trial Cuts Anaemia Among Telangana Teen Girls by 15 Points — Without a Hospital Visit

In Telangana, anaemia affects between 55% and 57% of all women of reproductive age, according to a cluster of surveys — a stubborn statistic that has resisted change for years. A new trial backed by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has now shown that anaemia among adolescent girls in the state can be cut sharply without requiring a single hospital visit.

The cluster-randomised trial evaluated the "Screen and Treat for Anaemia Reduction" (STAR) strategy across 14 villages in Medchal-Malkajgiri district, covering primary health centres (PHCs) at Narapally, Shamirpet and Srirangavaram. It found that a targeted, doorstep intervention worked better than the broad, one-size-fits-all campaigns tried before.

While haemoglobin levels rose only modestly across the whole study population, adolescent girls — the most vulnerable group — saw haemoglobin rise by 1.03 grams per decilitre, translating into a 15.3 percentage point drop in anaemia prevalence, from 56% to 40.7%. Before the trial, anaemia rates among adolescent girls in the study area ranged from over 40% to 56%.

The usual approach, run by India's health ministry with state health departments, is blanket distribution of prophylactic iron-folic acid (IFA) supplements from local health centres — a model that struggles because rural women and girls, facing deep-seated barriers, often cannot make regular hospital visits. The STAR trial instead sent health workers door-to-door for three months, testing haemoglobin on the spot and handing out status-based therapeutic or prophylactic IFA doses and deworming treatment based on each girl's individual result.

According to the researchers, the trial's success shows that generic anaemia campaigns fail because baseline vulnerabilities are not evenly distributed across a population, and that combining diagnostic screening with immediate doorstep treatment can reach girls that a hospital-based system misses.