VITAMIN &
MINERAL
DEFICIENCY
A devastating force threatens the lives of billions
• Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency prevents more
than two billion people from achieving their full
intellectual and physical potential
• It imposes a heavy toll on national economies
and on health care systems
• It condemns billions of people to lives lived
in poverty
A bigger problem,
a greater challenge
• Threat larger than ever imagined
• What we’ve learned is ‘the tip of the iceberg’
• Even moderate and invisible levels of deficiency
is devastating
A Global Summary
• Iodine deficiency lowers the intellectual capacity
of nations by as much as 10-15 percentage points
• Iron deficiency impairs the mental development of
40-60% of the developing world’s children
• Vitamin A deficiency impairs the immune systems
of 40% of the developing world’s children
A Global Summary
Every Year:
• Iodine deficiency causes 18 million babies to be
born with mental impairment
• Iron deficiency causes the unnecessary deaths of
60,000 women
• Folate deficiency causes approximately
200,000 preventable birth defects
• Nations unnecessarily lose more than 2% of their
gross national products
In “COUNTRY NAME”:
• Here insert specific damage statements and
protection summaries from the DAR and other
sources that are specific to your country and
region
The cost of the deficiency is huge
The cost of the solution is miniscule
• Billions of dollars are lost every year in lost
productivity, medical care and care for disabled
individuals
• Fortifying wheat flour in the 75 most needy
countries would cost 4 cents per person. The
return on this investment alone would be close
to half a billion dollars
VM Deficiency and
the UN Development Goals
• Controlling Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency lies at
the heart of development. It directly feeds into the
Millennium Development Goals:
–
–
–
–
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health
Develop a global partnership for development
VM Deficiency and
the UN Development Goals
• Controlling Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency lies at
the heart of development. It directly feeds into the
Millennium Development Goals:
– Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• By controlling vitamin and mineral deficiency, nations
around the world will have the potential to increase
Gross Domestic products by 2 to 3%
• The link between anemia and iodine deficiency and
productivity is very well established
VM Deficiency and
the UN Development Goals
• Controlling Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency lies at
the heart of development. It directly feeds into the
Millennium Development Goals:
– Reduce child mortality
• By ending vitamin A deficiency, more than
one million child deaths can be averted every year
• Vitamin A deficiency is known to be a significant
contributing factor to child mortality
• Vitamin A deficiency compromises the immune
systems of approximately 40% of the developing
world’s children
VM Deficiency and
the UN Development Goals
• Controlling Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency lies at
the heart of development. It directly feeds into the
Millennium Development Goals:
– Improve maternal health
• By controlling anemia in women, 50,000 maternal
deaths can be averted every year
• Severe anemia in pregnancy is known to contribute to
increasing maternal death rates and to compromising
the outcomes of pregnancy
VM Deficiency and
the UN Development Goals
• Controlling Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency lies at
the heart of development. It directly feeds into the
Millennium Development Goals:
– Develop a global partnership for development
• Ending vitamin and mineral deficiency lies at the
heart of development. The best hope for sustained
progress resides in the idea of national alliances to
press for, plan, implement and monitor specific
national solutions
• Such alliances are most effective when they
represent the range of those who have experience,
authority and means to put particular solutions into
effect on a national scale
VM Deficiency and
the UN Development Goals
These goals will not be achieved, and the impact
of VM Deficiency will not be significantly reduced,
without a more ambitious, visionary, and systematic
commitment to deploy known solutions on the same
scale as the known problems.
VM Deficiency and
the Copenhagen Consensus
• In the recent Copenhagen Consensus Project,
a panel of distinguished economists were asked
to select a set of top priorities for investment in
areas representing the ten greatest global
challenges in development
– Investing in vitamin and mineral programming
ranked second on their priority list
– Only stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS was a
higher priority
Solutions
• Vitamin and mineral deficiency represents a
much greater problem than was imagined even
a decade ago
• For once the world is confronted by a problem for
which there are available and affordable solutions
Solutions
•
•
•
•
Fortification
Supplementation
Education
Disease control
Combined, these methods have brought vitamin and
mineral deficiency under control in developed countries.
It is time now to deploy these solutions for the benefit of
developing nations.
Solutions
• Fortification
– Adding essential vitamins and minerals to foods
that are regularly consumed by a significant
proportion of the population (such as flour, salt,
sugar, oil and margarine)
– The cost can be as low as a few cents per person
per year
Solutions
• Supplementation
– Reaching out to vulnerable groups (particularly
children and women of childbearing age) with
vitamin and mineral supplements in the form of
tablets, capsules and syrups
– The cost can be as low as a few cents per person
per year
Solutions
• Education and food based approaches
– Informing communities about the kinds of foods that
can increase the intake and absorption of vitamins
and minerals
Solutions
• Disease control
– Controlling diseases like malaria, measles, diarrhea,
and parasitic infections can also help the body to
absorb and retain essential vitamins and minerals
A decade of progress
• Prevalence of iodine deficiency halved
– Close to 70% of the world’s households have
access to iodized salt
• Severe vitamin A deficiency largely controlled
– Close to 70% of the developing world’s children
receive vitamin A supplements
• Fortification movement gaining momentum
– 40 countries now have food fortification programs
• Recognition of the VM Deficiency problem
is growing
Current State of Progress in
“INSERT COUNTRY NAME HERE”
• Here outline progress to date made in your
country towards ending vitamin and mineral
deficiency
A job less than half done
• Despite the achievements, few nations have
moved decisively to end vitamin and mineral
deficiency
• Action has often lacked the ambition and vision
necessary to control vitamin and mineral
deficiency across entire populations
• If the goals accepted by the international
community are to be achieved, action against
vitamin and mineral deficiency needs to move
on to a new level
A job less than half done
• Despite the achievements of the past decade,
one million children still die needlessly every year
• Reaching 60% or 70% of children is not good
enough. Stopping here will result in VM Deficiency
becoming a problem only for the poor and will
make it significantly more difficult to commit more
resources to end it
• To end vitamin and mineral deficiency, governments,
industry, UN agencies, non-governmental agencies
and media need to shed the old thinking
• Integrated national-level policies need to be
developed that reach out to whole populations to
protect them against the consequences of vitamin
and mineral deficiency
• Use this section to outline specific actions that
can be taken nationally towards ending vitamin
and mineral deficiency in your country … Add a
few country-specific slides if necessary.
• Use and customize the next slides to create a
specific call for action by specific sectors in your
country.
Everyone can join the effort
Tools do exist to initiate
policy dialogue
• Vitamin and Mineral
Deficiency: A Global
Progress Report
• Damage Assessment
Reports for 80 developing
nations
• A Challenge to the World’s
Food companies
• A Guide to Media
Professionals
• Other resources are
available at:
• www.micronutrient.org
• www.unicef.org
How the tools can be used
• By national authorities to review existing activities to reach
the agreed upon goals (UNGASS and MDGs)
• By national authorities including civil, civic and educational
to review current understandings, and make adjustments
to assure wide public and consumer understanding of the
solution
• By the food industry, nationally, which can develop market
and distribute low cost fortified food products and
supplements
• By communication outlets in public, private media, cultural
media, scientific and other journals. The effort here is not
just to repeat what’s in the DAR documents, but to
institute investigative reporting and analysis nationally
How the tools can be used
• By UN agencies in their annual reviews of
development cooperation with governments
• By bilateral and multilateral aid agencies in their
annual reviews of development cooperation with
governments
• By national non-governmental organizations
in their development cooperation within the
country, and
• By international NGOs in their development
cooperation plans
What Private food companies can do
• Food companies have played an historic role in
controlling vitamin and mineral deficiencies in
industrialized countries
• It is now a matter of urgency that the benefits of food
fortification be extended to the developing nations
• Food companies can use and share their technical
expertise with those in developing nations
• Food companies can apply their production,
distribution and marketing skills to make fortified
foods widely available and affordable in developing
countries
How governments can help
• Governments can:
– Help build public demand for fortified foods through
health and education services
– Assist with start-up financing and product
development
– Endorse approved food products
– Allow distribution of certain fortified foods through
schools, hospitals and clinics
– Reduce duties on imported vitamins and minerals
or on essential machinery used for fortification
– Legislate in support of food fortification
Controlling vitamin and mineral
deficiency is an affordable opportunity
to improve the lives of two billion
people and strengthen the pulse of
economic development.