Treating people for anaemia may make them more susceptible to malaria.
Hailemichael Gebreselassie of the Ethiopian government’s Health and Nutrition
Research Unit and Zenaw Adam of University College London, working with
colleagues at McGill University in Montreal, have found that 30 per cent of
Ethiopian women and children are anaemic. But iron supplements increase the risk
of suffering malaria by up to 43 per cent. The parasites digest haemoglobin in
red blood cells, which becomes more abundant after the iron treatment.
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