Vitamin A campaign wraps up

A nationwide campaign to boost vitamin A among children has been completed in Kyrgyzstan, according to a health ministry official. "The third round of the vitamin A supplementation campaign supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF] finished this weekend," Yelena Bayalieva, a spokeswoman for the health ministry, said in the capital Bishkek on Monday. "It has been carried out throughout the country with the help of family doctors, at clinics or at family healthcare centres," Bayalieva said, adding that preliminary findings showed that mothers were active in bringing in their children for the vitamin treatment.” Thousands of volunteers and health workers administered the vitamin capsules to children in thousands of different locations. Vitamin A is essential for vision, growth, cellular differentiation, reproduction and the integrity of the immune system. It is also important in protecting the body against serious infectious diseases, including measles and cholera. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children and raises the risk of disease and death from severe infections. In pregnant women VAD causes night blindness and may increase the risk of maternal mortality. The six-day campaign, which ended on Saturday, targeted those over six months and under five years of age in the former Soviet republic and was aimed at boosting the immune system, as well as reducing infant and children mortality rates. The campaign was a response to high child mortality rates in Kyrgyzstan, where up to 28.2 deaths were recorded per 1,000 children under five between 1997 and 2003. A survey carried out in the southern Osh and central Naryn provinces in 2003, showed that some 33 percent of children under five lacked sufficient quantities of vitamin A in their blood. According to the WHO, half a million children are blind worldwide as a direct consequence of VAD.