|
NEW YORK--Vitamin A supplements saved the lives of at least 300,000 children in developing countries in 1997, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report The State of the World's Children 1998.
Vitamin A deficiency, which affects about 100 million children worldwide, according to the report, has long been known to cause blindness. It is now known to also impair the immune system and cause maternal mortality, a distinct problem among women in impoverished regions.
" There's mounting evidence that improved nutrition, such as an adequate intake of vitamin A and iodine, can bring profound benefits to entire populations," says Kofi A. Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations.
The 1990 World Summit for Children set goals for the year 2000 to virtually eliminate vitamin A and iodine deficiencies and to reduce iron deficiency anemia in women by one-third. As part of the effort, more than half the children where vitamin A deficiencies are common received supplements in 1997, up from about one-third in 1994.
A dozen field studies, conducted in Brazil, Ghana, India, Nepal and elsewhere, indicate that supplementing the diets of children at risk of vitamin A deficiency, in particular, saves lives that would otherwise be taken by diarrhea, measles and malaria. Supplementing also reduces the incidence of pregnancy-related deaths among women--and even the incidence of children born with HIV/AIDS. For example:
* Deaths from diarrhea, which currently kills 2.2 million children a year, were reduced by 35 to 50 percent with vitamin A supplementation.
* The number of deaths due to measles, which kills nearly 1 million annually, were reduced by half, an effect believed to stem from vitamin A's crucial effect on immune-system functioning.
* Malaria kills 600,000 children annually. Controlled trials in Papua New Guinea showed that vitamin A reduced by more than a third childhood febrile illnesses resulting from low to moderately high levels of malaria parasites, and significantly reduced spleen swelling, an indicator of chronic malaria.
* On an interesting side note, supplementing with zinc--an immunity-aiding micronutrient that boosts vitamin A effectiveness--helped blunt the severity of the worst malaria cases. In the same study, more than a third fewer malaria cases were seen at health centers among those given zinc than among those given a placebo. Also, overall clinic visits decreased by a third among those who received zinc, with signs of other infections such as cough and diarrhea reduced by 20 to 50 percent.
* Pregnancy-related deaths were reduced by an average of 44 percent among pregnant Nepalese mothers who received low-dose vitamin A supplements. Nearly 600,000 women die worldwide each year from pregnancy-related causes.
* Even more stunning, a 1994 study of HIV-infected women in Malawi concluded that vitamin A-deficient women were 4.5 times more likely to pass on the virus to their children. However, some experts have suggested that poor vitamin A status and high rates of infection occur together for other reasons.
visit www.unicef.org/sowc98/ for the full UNICEF report.
--Todd Runestad
|
