The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Experts seek steps to tackle micronutrient deficiency in children

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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Experts seek steps to tackle micronutrient deficiency in children

Staff Reporter

Workshop on ‘Strategies for combating childhood micronutrient malnutrition in Kerala’

Thiruvananthapuram: Deficiency of micronutrients among children, especially that of Vitamin A and iron, is emerging as a major public health problem in the State and needs to be tackled urgently through supplementation programmes, paediatricians and nutrition experts have pointed out.

Ensuring adequate Vitamin A intake among all children between the ages of six months to five years should be considered as a critical intervention for child survival and the message should be conveyed properly to the primary healthcare network as well as the paediatricians in the private sector, they suggested.

At a workshop on ‘Strategies for combating childhood micronutrient malnutrition in Kerala,’ here on Thursday, organised by the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), in association with the Unicef and the Departments of Community Medicine and Applied Nutrition of the Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, nutrition experts pointed out that the poor constitution of the daily diet and increasing dependence on processed foods with no nutritional content was playing havoc with the health of children.

The workshop was inaugurated by NRHM State Director Dinesh Arora.

Speaking on the occasion, K.E. Elizabeth, Professor of Paediatrics, SAT Hospital, said several studies done at the SAT hospital had shown that even babies with normal birth weight slipping into the malnutrition spectrum by the age of two years because of the poor dietary intake of the mothers and poor complimentary feeding practices. Calcium deficiency was also found to be high among babies, she said.

Studies done after analysing the cord blood of pre-term babies, babies of low birth weight and those with normal birth weight had shown that iron and calcium levels were low even in babies with normal birth weight. This was directly linked to the mothers’ diet.

Increased risk

Vitamin A deficiency can compromise the immune system in babies and it is one of the major contributors to under-five mortality. It puts children at an increased risk of diseases like night blindness, skin problems, diarrhoea and measles.

Inadequate supplies

The Union Government had been running the Vitamin A supplementation programme since 1970. The programme had been suffering due to inadequate supplies.

Even though the government had recommended Vitamin A supplementation as part of routine immunisation, the coverage of children had been poor in the State as more and more people started depending on private-sector hospitals for routine immunisation, Additional Director of Health Services (Health & Family Welfare) P.K. Jamila said.

Those who spoke on the occasion included G.N.V. Brahmam of the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, and Sathish Kumar, chief of the Unicef field office for Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

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