Pakistan, Oct. 22 -- What if the most effective anaemia programme in Pakistan started before a girl turned fifteen? Pakistan's own nutrition strategy already includes the idea, yet researchers from CERP, presenting at a South Asian nutrition conference in December 2025, reported that only about one in ten adolescent girls were receiving weekly iron-folic acid supplements.

Those girls need it. The 2018 National Nutrition Survey found that around half of Pakistan's adolescent girls were anaemic, but most anaemia efforts begin only when a woman becomes pregnant or has a baby. By then the deficiency may have been building for years, and depleted iron stores take months to rebuild, which is time a pregnancy does not give.

Adolescence is when...