Jaipur, Aug. 1 -- Nearly a third of all blood units used for pregnant women in Rajasthan's tribal Dungarpur district over an 11-month period went toward transfusions for severe anaemia, according to government data tabled in the Lok Sabha on Friday, underscoring the scale of a maternal health crisis in India's tribal belt. Responding to an unstarred question by MP Rajkumar Roat, minister of state for health and family welfare Anupriya Patel told the House that between April 2025 and February 2026, 34,304 pregnant women were screened in Dungarpur, of whom 3,152, about 9%, were found with severe anaemia, defined as haemoglobin below 7 grams per decilitre. The district's government medical college and its affiliated hospital supplied 5,390 units of blood in that period, of which 1,662 were transfused specifically to treat severe anaemia in pregnant women. Roat asked the government to confirm whether nearly 7,000 of 10,175 pregnant women tested in Dungarpur in the same window, roughly 69%, had been found anaemic, and whether 2,544 of 4,584 blood units issued by the district hospital had gone to pregnant women. The minister's reply neither confirmed nor denied those figures, offering a different data set instead, drawn from a larger sample but restricted to severe cases only, which makes direct comparison difficult. Even so, by the government's own numbers, close to a third of all blood issued at the district hospital went toward transfusions in anaemic pregnant women alone, pointing to a persistently heavy burden on the district's maternal care system. The reply leaned on the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21) to sketch the wider picture. Anemia afflicts 46.3% of pregnant women in Rajasthan overall, and 61.6% of Scheduled Tribe women aged 15 to 49 in the state. In Dungarpur specifically, 72.6% of all women in that age group are anaemic, against a state average of 54.4%, a gap of nearly 20 percentage points. The minister's response also gave no year-wise breakup of anaemic cases in tribal areas over the last five years, despite the question specifically seeking one. Asked what the Centre is doing about it, the ministry pointed to a raft of existing programmes and one recent change. On June 29, at the 16th meeting of the Central Council of Health and Family Welfare, the government issued fresh guidelines for the Anaemia Mukt Bharat Abhiyan, replacing its earlier 6X6X6 framework with an expanded 7X7X7 strategy targeting seven life-stage age groups through seven institutional mechanisms and seven core interventions. Other measures cited include iron-folic acid supplementation, anaemia screening at every antenatal visit, severity-based clinical protocols, second-trimester deworming, and community drives to counter myths around anemia. The government also pointed to free monthly antenatal checkups under the Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan, free delivery care under the Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram, a zero-tolerance-for-denial guarantee under Surakshit Matritva Aashwasan, and birth waiting homes in remote and tribal areas. Anemia in pregnancy raises the risk of maternal and infant mortality, preterm birth and low birth weight. That a third of Dungarpur's blood supply still goes toward treating anaemic pregnant women, even by the government's narrower count, suggests the burden on frontline health infrastructure in tribal Rajasthan remains substantial despite over a decade of flagship nutrition programmes....