Home | UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEF

UK joins Global Vitamin A Partnership

UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy spoke to members of the partnership at a Washington luncheon where she welcomed the United Kingdom to the worldwide effort to ensure that every child has an adequate supply of a vitamin that can spell the difference between life and death.

Vitamin A supplementation is needed by 100 million children around the world, Ms. Bellamy said. "Particularly in countries with high under-five mortality rates – more than 70 deaths per thousand – we know that children are dying because they have not received this little capsule, or a food staple that has been fortified with vitamin A," she said.

UNICEF has been working with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ottawa-based Micronutrient Initiative (MI) to make sure that capsules and fortified foods are available in areas of need.

One purpose of the Washington meeting, hosted by US First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and USAID Administrator Brian Atwood, is to draw major private sector corporations into the Partnership.

Praising the assembled governments and corporate participants, Ms. Bellamy also commended countries like Zambia and the Philippines, where vitamin A fortification and supplementation have been highly successful. She noted that in Bangladesh some 700,000 volunteers have given their time to ensure that children receive twice-a-year vitamin A capsules.

"This little capsule costs a mere two cents to make," Ms. Bellamy noted. "In countries where vitamin A deficiency is a problem, giving children a capsule like this twice a year can increase their chances of survival by 23 per cent."

The importance of vitamin A was dramatically shown in a recent study in Nepal that documented an average 44 per cent decline in maternal mortality among women who received either vitamin A or beta-carotene supplements. When vitamin A is adequate, death from measles can be cut in half and death from diarrhoea can be reduced by 40 per cent.

Vitamin A-rich foods are not always readily available to people who need them, in either the developing or the industrialized world. Where they are not present, conscious efforts must be made to supplement diets or to fortify staple foods.

"The world has the means to end vitamin A deficiency," Ms. Bellamy said. "Our task today is to prove that globalization has to do not merely with the expansion of markets but with the growth of partnerships for a healthy planet, where progress and its benefits are shared by all, starting with children."

Home| UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEF