Vitamin A Critical to Food Crisis

(NewsUSA) - The current food crisis will cause long-term health consequences for years to come -; today's malnourished children may become tomorrow's blind children.

Rising fuel prices and biofuel production, which uses land that could otherwise grow food crops, have caused food shortages throughout the developing world. In countries where malnourishment is already a public health problem, the food shortage puts extra strain on families. Approximately 650,000 children, who do not receive enough nutrition to support healthy immune function, will die from preventable diseases such as diarrhea, measles and malaria.

Vitamin A deficiency proves especially devastating for young children. Vitamin A deficiency causes blindness, stunted growth and weakened immunity. Without a strong immune system, children die from diseases that wouldn't cost an American child more than a day off from school.

"Vitamin A deficiency remains a major nutritional and health burden across the most disadvantaged populations of the developing world," says Howard Schiffer, the founder of Vitamin Angels, a nonprofit organization that works to reduce deaths in children under age five by providing essential micronutrients, especially vitamin A.

One of the nonprofit's most aggressive campaigns, Operation 20/20, intends to reduce the childhood blindness and deaths caused by vitamin A deficiency by the year 2020. So far, the campaign has helped 5.5 million children in 17 countries.

Vitamin Angels recently commissioned a report from leading nutrition experts at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. One of the report's key findings? The overall importance of vitamin A supplementation for newborns in conjunction with reaching postpartum mothers. "Supplementing newborns could save 250,000 infant lives each year in Southern Asia alone," says Schiffer.

Vitamin Angels plans to collaborate in dietary supplementation programs that stress both conventional and innovative distribution mechanisms able to improve availability, access and use of vitamin A. Vitamin Angels also plans to engage in efforts to connect vitamin A supplementation with newborns, to further reduce infant mortality.

How much does it cost to save a child's sight? Just pennies a day. "Vitamin A supplementation is an effective and inexpensive intervention to prevent childhood blindness, other serious illnesses and premature deaths," says Schiffer.

For additional information about Vitamin Angels, visit www.VitaminAngels.org.

"Article By: NewsUSA"