SEVERITY AND MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF ANAEMIA AMONG CHILDREN AGED 2- 59 MONTHS IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA: A CROSS SECTIONAL STUDY PROTOCOL

Background Anaemia is a clinically significant secondary diagnosis in children under the age of five in most parts of developing world, including Tanzania. Studies that assess clinical conditions associated with prenatal and postnatal era are highly relevant to global health as they tend to reflect patterns of significant health challenges across the entire human lifespan. Objective To assess for morphological characteristics and severity of anaemia among under-five population seen at Dar es Salaam regional referral facilities in Tanzania. Design & Methods A cross-sectional hospital based study will be conducted at Temeke Regional Referral and Mbagala Rangi Tatu district hospitals in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. All children aged 2-59 months will be eligible to participate in the study. All children aged 2 – 59 months with anaemia will be the target population. The study main tool will be a self-administered questionnaire with five distinct parts. Data analysis will commence with summarisation. Specifically, continuous data will be summarised using median (with inter-quartile range) and categorical data will be summarised using frequency (and proportion by %) Graphical tools will also be employed where by important correlations as well as +/- outliers will be assessed. Besides, univariate and bivariate statistics will be computed for all clinically relevant data. Main outcome measure will be severity and morphological classification of anaemia. Unless otherwise stated, an alpha-level of 5% will be used as a limit of type 1 error in findings. Written informed consent will be sought from the parent/guardian of each participant child prior to inclusion into the study.