Vitamin A Deficiency-Related Disorders (VADD)

The most damaging micronutrient deficiencies in the world are the consequence of low dietary intake of iron, vitamin A, iodine and zinc. Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is prevalent among the poor whose diets are based mainly on rice or other carbohydrate-rich, micronutrient-poor calory sources. Rice does not contain any β-carotene (provitamin A), which their body could then convert into vitamin A. Dependence on rice as the predominant food source, therefore, necessarily leads to VAD, most severely affecting small children and pregnant women. In 2012 the World Health Organization reported that about 250 million preschool children are affected by VAD, and that providing those children with vitamin A could prevent about a third of all under-five deaths, which amounts to up to 2.7 million children that could be saved from dying unnecessarily.

VAD compromises the immune systems of approximately 40 percent of children under five in the developing world, greatly increasing the severeness of common childhood infections, often leading to deadly outcomes. VAD is most severe in Southeast Asia and Africa. For the 400 million rice-consuming poor, the medical consequences are fatal: impaired vision—, in extreme cases irreversible blindness; impaired epithelial integrity, exposing the affected individuals to infections; reduced immune response; impaired haemopoiesis (and hence reduced capacity to transport oxygen in the blood) and skeletal growth; among other debilitating afflictions.  Rice containing provitamin A could substantially reduce the problems described above…..To Read More….