ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

"The well-resolved mind is single and one-pointed." - Bhagavad Gita

POOR NATIONS SUFFER BRAIN DRAIN

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 hemisphere. The report reveals 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 below their physical and mental potential.

The report summarizes the findings of nutrition "damage assessment" 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 productivity, with estimated losses of 2 per cent of GDP in the worst-affected countries.

* Vitamin A deficiency compromises the immune systems of approximately 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 million babies a year to be born mentally impaired.

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

* 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 insidious. The effects on nations, and on economic development, are only just beginning to be measured. But at the heart of the VMD problem is the fact that it is in the vital, vulnerable, earliest months of life when poor nutrition has its most devastating and durable effects.

"It's no longer acceptable to simply identify symptoms of micronutrient deficiency in individuals and then treat them," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. "We have to protect entire populations against the
devastating consequences of vitamin and mineral deficiency, especially children. In the industrialized 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."

For more details on this report, go to:
http://www.unicef.org/media/media_19022.html

ExchangeEveryDay

Delivered five days a week containing news, success stories, solutions, trend reports, and much more.