Between 1993 and 2005, an estimated 600 million children across the globe were diagnosed with anaemia, a disorder often caused by poor bioavailability of dietary iron resulting from malnutrition. Strategies to reduce mortality in children, especially those from low-income countries, are of the utmost importance. Iron supplementation is an obvious approach, but adverse side-effects from high-dose iron supplements have been widely reported. Lately, the addition of prebiotics and probiotics has proven to be effective for treating anaemia and is expected to treat many other diseases in the near future.