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Opinion Volume 4 Issue 5
Vitamin a deficiency as a global public health threat: a concern in nutritional victimization
Abdul Hakim
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Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University, Bangladesh
Correspondence: Abdul Hakim, School of Food Technology and Nutritional Science, Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University, Tangail, Bangladesh
Received: July 31, 2016 | Published: August 3, 2016
Citation: Hakim A. Vitamin a deficiency as a global public health threat: a concern in nutritional victimization. J Nutr Health Food Eng. 2016;4(5):508-509. DOI: 10.15406/jnhfe.2016.04.00147
Opinion
Vitamin A deficiency is on the helm of great public health panic across the globe, especially in developing and poor countries. Vitamin A deficiency disease night blindness by name affects about 2.5million preschoolers and 9.8million pregnant women as corresponding to 0.9% and 7.8% of the population at risk of vitamin A deficiency diseases respectively and about one-third of the world preschoolers are estimated in vitamin A deficiency sufferers in South East Asia and in Africa.1,2
The premier etiology to form vitamin A deficiency is prolonged vitamin A lacking diet consumption, resulting in failure to sustain the physiological requirement in infancy, childhood, adulthood, pregnancy, lactation and geriatric.3,4 There are different active and passive risk factors in this connection like food taboos, gender bias, genetic codes, poor socioeconomic condition, measles, respiratory infection, malnutrition, agricultural production, inadequate government policy have been endorsed in vitamin A deficiency causation5‒9 and the vitamin A deficiency prevalence is diagnosed using clinical or biochemical parameters.1 This condition can cause xeropthalmia, anemia and liable to lead infection and risk of growth retardation and death in severe condition.1,10,11
It is a dilemma that xerophthalmia has not been controlled despite taking different measures in different countries in the world.12,13 It is high time to organize 1/n nutrition counseling14 across different topographic sites in the earth to resist nutritional victitogenesis15,16 relied on vitamin A deficiency aiming to meet the true occurrence of malnutrition rebuking movement by 2020.17,18
Acknowledgements
None.
Conflict of interest
Author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
References
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- Sherwin JC, Reacher MH, Dean WH, et al. Epidemiology of vitamin A deficiency and xerophthalmia in at-risk populations. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 2012;106(4):205‒214.
- http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/blindness/blindness_facts/en/index6.html
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- Hakim MA. Malnutrition Prevalence and Nutrition Counseling in Developing Countries: A Case Study. International Journal of Nursing and Health Science. 2016;3(3):19‒22.
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- Ending Malnutrition by 2020: an Agenda for Change in the Millennium. Final Report to the ACC/SCN by Commission on the Nutrition Challenges of the 21st Century.
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