Vitamin A supplementation campaign continues

A micronutrient supplementation campaign aimed at ensuring sufficient intake of vitamin A amongst millions of Uzbek children has been running this week, IRIN learnt on Friday. "We are conducting a week of vitamin A supplementation all over the republic [of Uzbekistan] for children up to 5 years of age," Dilorom Akhmedova, chief paediatrician of the Uzbek health ministry, told IRIN from the eastern Uzbek city of Ferghana, another stop on her nationwide tour to monitoring the campaign. "We are also covering women who gave birth over the past 6 to 8 weeks." The Uzbek health ministry launched its 'healthy child week' campaign on Monday in an effort to provide vitamin A supplementation to all youngsters in the country between six and 59 months old, or some 2.5 million children. "This is the third round of the campaign and it is going quite successfully," Akhmedova added. The Uzbek health ministry started conducting nation wide vitamin A campaigns in September 2003. The supplementation week is held every six months based on recommendations the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Vitamin A designates a group of compounds essential for vision, growth, cellular differentiation, reproduction and the integrity of the immune system. The micronutrient is also important in protecting the body against serious infectious diseases, including measles and diarrheal illnesses. According to 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. A recent UNICEF-funded report on VAD in Ferghana province - the country's region where fruit and vegetables are abundant, an important factor for vitamin A intake via diet - revealed that 53 percent of participating children suffered some level of vitamin A deficiency, of which 9 percent were with severe deficiency. The international health community considers VAD a public health problem when 15 percent or more of a tested population have insufficient levels of vitamin A. Given the magnitude of the problem, UNICEF initiated organising vitamin A supplementation in the country and the Canadian government had been providing vitamin capsules within the project set to last until 2006, Shukhrat Rakhimjanov, a health/nutrition officer for UNICEF, told IRIN from the capital, Tashkent. "We trained a whole 'army' of [health] specialists on the importance of vitamin A supplementation both on national and provincial levels," Rakhimjanov said. "Along with that we developed guidelines on monitoring vitamin A supplementation on the ground. So it is not just giving vitamin drops but following-up of children, how they develop etc." Although there haven't been any studies or surveys to assess the impact of the campaign there are signs that things are getting better. "People on the ground say that their children are often getting sick less. It is anticipated because their immunity is getting stronger as vitamin A boosts child's immune system," Rakhimjanov said.