Best practices for haemoglobin measurement in population-level anaemia surveys: technical brief

Overview

Haemoglobin is one of the most common biomarkers that is measured for diagnosis and treatment of anaemia. It is generally measured using single-drop capillary blood specimens in large-scale surveys. However, emerging evidence suggests that the use of single-drop capillary blood can introduce substantial errors in the measurement of haemoglobin.

This technical brief describes the current best practices for haemoglobin measurement. It provides guidance for measuring haemoglobin in surveys to estimate anaemia prevalence.