Background: Around the world 115,000 out of 510,000 maternal deaths and out of 2,464,000 perinatal deaths 591,000 are associated with anaemia. Even though National nutritional anaemia prophylaxis programme was implemented to reduce nutritional anaemia in the year 1970 still anaemia is more common in rural pregnant women.Hence the present cross-sectional study. Material & Methods: Objectives: To know the prevalence of anaemia among pregnant women residing in rural area & the factors associated with anaemia.Study was carried out from May-July 2011 in Primary Health Center, Handignur Belgaum, among 214 pregnant women residing in that area during the study period. With the help of pre designed questionnaire all pregnant women were interviewed & data was collected. Statistical Analysis: Chi-square test was used for testing association between anaemia and factors associated with it. Results: In the present study prevalence of anaemia was 57.1% and 60.3% of pregnant women were in age group of 18-24 years, 77.8% were illiterates & 88.2% belonged to class V of B.G.Prasad’s socio-economic classification. 78.6% women were gravida 4 & above were found to be anaemic. Conclusion: Our study showed that prevalence of anaemia was > 50% among pregnant women. Anaemia was positively associated with educational status of pregnant women and their husbands, age at menarche, parity, spacing between children. There was no statistical association between anaemia and the age of pregnant women.

Keywords: Anaemia prevalence; Pregnant women; Rural India.