Why Anaemia Is West Bengal's Most Overlooked Health Crisis

Anaemia is the most common health problem you will almost never hear discussed at a dinner table in Barasat. It does not arrive with a dramatic symptom. It shows up as a woman who is tired by mid-afternoon, who puts it down to the heat, the housework, the kids, the season. By the time it is bad enough to send someone to a doctor, it has usually been there for years.

West Bengal has the highest prevalence of anaemia among women of reproductive age of any state in India. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019–21) put it at 71.4% — up from 62.5% in the previous survey round. That is not a number drifting down slowly. It went up by roughly 9 percentage points in five years, and it rose across every district in the state.

We see the same picture at our diagnostic centre in Barasat. Most of the women who come in for a routine blood test are not coming in for anaemia. They are coming for something else, and the anaemia is found along the way — if anyone thinks to look.

Why it stays hidden

A few reasons stack on top of each other.

The symptoms are easy to explain away. Fatigue, breathlessness on stairs, pale skin, brittle nails, feeling cold, poor concentration. Each one on its own sounds like ordinary tiredness. Together they are a pattern, but you only see the pattern if someone is checking.

Testing has a cost and a distance attached to it. A haemoglobin test usually means a blood draw, a lab, and a trip. For a woman in a rural block of North 24 Parganas — managing a household, maybe agricultural work, maybe young children — that trip competes with everything else in her day. It loses.

And there is the quiet assumption that being tired is just part of a woman's life. It is the most damaging belief of all, because it turns a treatable condition into a permanent background hum.

Why catching it early matters

Iron-deficiency anaemia is one of the more fixable problems in primary care. Caught early, it is often managed with diet, supplementation, and follow-up. Left alone, it compounds.

In pregnancy, anaemia raises the risk of complications for both mother and baby. In adolescent girls, it sets a lower baseline for the rest of their adult lives. In older adults, it masks and worsens heart problems. The condition itself is rarely the headline — it is the multiplier underneath other things going wrong.

That is the case for screening, plainly stated: the disease is common, the harm is cumulative, and the fix works best when you start early. The only thing standing in the way is that nobody is testing.

What we are trying to change

SamaHealth exists to move that test closer to the people who need it. Anubhav Life Care is an NABL-accredited diagnostic centre in Barasat, and the work we are building around it is about taking screening out of the lab queue and putting it where women already are — the antenatal visit, the routine check, the community camp down the road.

We will write more in the coming months about how that screening works and what we are learning. For now the point is simpler. More than half the women we see are anaemic, and most of them did not know. That gap is the whole problem. Closing it is the whole job.

FAQ

How common is anaemia in West Bengal? According to NFHS-5 (2019–21), 71.4% of women of reproductive age in West Bengal are anaemic — the highest rate of any Indian state.

What are the early signs of anaemia in women? Persistent tiredness, breathlessness on exertion, pale skin, brittle nails, feeling cold, and difficulty concentrating. Many people dismiss these as ordinary fatigue.

Can anaemia be treated? Yes. Iron-deficiency anaemia, the most common form, is usually managed with dietary changes, iron supplementation, and follow-up — and responds best when caught early.