PHA-Exchange> How Vitamins Could Change the World

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From: Leela McCullough <leela at healthnet.org>

How Vitamins Could Change the World
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New Study Finds Billions of People Lack Basic Micronutrients,
with Massive Loss of IQ

Wednesday 21 January 2004, Davos, Switzerland - A new report
from UNICEF and the Micronutrient Initiative finds that lack of
basic vitamins and minerals in the diet is damaging the health
of one-third of the world's people and holding back the economic
development of virtually every country in the southern hemi-
sphere.

Few outside specialist circles are aware of what vitamin and
mineral deficiency means for individuals and nations. But the
report, released today at the World Economic Forum, finds that a
lack of key vitamins and minerals is responsible for impairing
intellectual development, compromising immune systems, provoking
birth defects, and consigning some 2 billion people to lives be-
low their physical and mental potential.

The report summarises the findings of nutrition "damage assess-
ment" studies in 80 nations, throwing new light on vitamin and
mineral deficiency levels that are almost impossible to detect
without laboratory tests.

The report finds that:

* Iron deficiency impairs mental development in young children
and is lowering national IQs. It also undermines adult produc-
tivity, with estimated losses of 2 per cent of GDP in the worst-
affected countries.

* Vitamin A deficiency compromises the immune systems of ap-
proximately 40% of children under five in the developing world,
leading to the deaths of 1 million youngsters each year.

* Iodine deficiency in pregnancy is causing as many as 20 mil-
lion babies a year to be born mentally impaired.

* Severe iron deficiency anaemia is causing the deaths of an es-
timated 50,000 women a year during childbirth.

* And folate deficiency is causing approximately 200,000 severe
birth defects every year and is associated with roughly 1 in 10
adult deaths from heart disease.

The report states that the effects of vitamin and micronutrient
deficiency on adults, particularly on women, are subtle and in-
sidious. The effects on nations, and on economic development,
are only just beginning to be measured. But at the heart of the
Vitamin-Mineral-Deficiency (VMD) problem is the fact that it is
in the vital, vulnerable, earliest months of life when poor nu-
trition has its most devastating and durable effects.

"It's no longer acceptable to simply identify symptoms of micro-
nutrient deficiency in individuals and then treat them," said
UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. "We have to protect en-
tire populations against the devastating consequences of vitamin
and mineral deficiency, especially children. In the industrial-
ized world we've been doing it for years.

There is no excuse for not reaching every human being with these
simple but life-saving micronutrients. We know what needs doing
- we just have to do it.

The Solutions

The report says that whole populations can be protected against
vitamin and mineral deficiencies by tested and inexpensive meth-
ods. Those solutions include:

Food Fortification: Adding essential vitamins and minerals to
foods that are regularly consumed by most people (such as flour,
salt, sugar, cooking oil and margarine). Costs only a few cents
per person per year.

Supplementation: Reaching out to vulnerable groups (particularly
children and women of childbearing age) with vitamin and mineral
supplements in the form of tablets, capsules and syrups. Costs
only a few cents per person per year.

Education: Informing communities about the kinds of foods that
can increase the intake and absorption of needed vitamins and
minerals.

Disease Control: Controlling diseases like malaria, measles, di-
arrhoea, and parasitic infections can also help the body to ab-
sorb and retain essential vitamins and minerals.

These are the methods that brought the VMD problem under control
in the industrialized nations decades ago. But UN goals to bring
vitamin and mineral deficiency under control in the developing
world will not be achieved, the report concludes, without a more
ambitious, visionary, and systematic commitment to "deploy known
solutions on the same scale as the known problems."

That's why the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) was
set up to foster private-public projects to fill the micronutri-
ents gap. According to Jay Naidoo, Chairman of the Board of the
Development Bank of Southern Africa as well as the current chair
of GAIN: "The nutrition gap is one we can close immediately,
simply and relatively cheaply." For example, Naidoo said if
wheat flour was fortified in the 75 most needy countries with
iron and folic acid, iron deficiency could be reduced by 10%,
and birth defects could be lowered by a third. Such fortifica-
tion would cost a total of about $85 million, which is about 4
cents per person.

"As a result, we estimate these countries would gain $275 mil-
lion in increased productivity and $200 million from the en-
hanced earning potential," Naidoo said. "There are many other
examples to emphasize that public-private partnerships to invest
in food fortification are investments not only in health, but
also in national economies."

After a decade of dramatic developments, the facts are known,
the solutions are available, and the cause is one in which many
individuals and organizations - governments, the private sector,
the medical and scientific community, civil society - can all
become involved.

"When so much could be achieved for so many, and for so little,
it would be a matter of global disgrace if vitamin and mineral
deficiency were not brought under control in the years immedi-
ately ahead," the report concludes.

For a copy of the report as Adobe PDF file (8 pp. 82 kB) go to:
http://www.micronutrient.org/pdfs/VMD.pdf