Poor diet threatens health of two billion people: Unicef

Lack of vitamins and minerals in the diet is damaging the health of two billion people and holding back the economic development of "virtually every country in the southern hemisphere" despite inexpensive means of prevention, according to a new United Nations report.

Released today the report calls for a "more ambitious, visionary, and systematic" commitment to fight problems such as malnutrition and poverty.

The report, from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Micronutrient Initiative, was released at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The report said: "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 immediately ahead.”

Whole populations can be protected by tested and inexpensive methods such as adding essential vitamins and minerals to regularly consumed foods like flour, salt, sugar, cooking oil and margarine at an annual cost of only a few cents per person, it said.

Other measures include providing vulnerable groups, particularly children and women of childbearing age, with supplemental tablets, capsules and syrups, which are inexpensive.

UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said: “It’s no longer acceptable to simply identify symptoms of micronutrient deficiency in individuals and then treat them.

“We have to protect entire populations against the devastating consequences of vitamin and mineral deficiency, especially children.”

Health problems for the malnourished are numerous and long-reaching, for example iron deficiency impairs mental development in young children, lowers national IQs and undermines adult productivity, with estimated losses of 2% of the gross domestic product in the worst-affected countries.

Vitamin A deficiency compromises the immune systems of some 40% of children under five in the developing world, leading to the deaths of one million youngsters each year, while iodine deficiency in pregnancy leaves up to 20 million babies a year mentally impaired, it said.

Severe iron deficiency anaemia kills some 50,000 women annually during childbirth. Folate deficiency causes some 200,000 severe birth defects each year and is associated with roughly one in ten adult deaths from heart disease, according to the report.

(gmcg)