Health and nutrition: ‘Efforts needed to bring down iodine deficiency’

Experts say malnutrition indicators are ‘alarming’.

LAHORE:

“Considerable efforts are needed to bring down iodine deficiency and to sustain the Universal Salt Iodisation (USI) programme in the long run,” said Baseer Achakzai, director programmes and regulation of the Ministry of National Health Services.

He was addressing a workshop to review the USI programme. The two-day meeting was held with the financial assistance of the Micronutrient Initiative.

The objective of this workshop was to review the performance of the programme in the last year.

More than 60 participants, including senior representatives of the Health Department, development organisations, focal persons on nutrition and salt manufacturers from all provinces attended the meeting.

Planning Commission chief nutrition expert Shaheen Aslm presented a brief history of the IDD/USI programme in Pakistan.

Micronutrient Initiative Country Director Tausif Akhtar Janjua said Pakistan was amongst countries where IDD was still a public health issue. He said research showed that iodine deficiency was the major cause of mental impairment, brain damage and 13-15 per cent low IQ in growing children.

Khizar Ashraf from WFP said mothers and children have directly benefitted from the IDD programme and the percentage of severely iodine deficient mothers had decreased to 3 per cent in 2011 as compared to 37 per cent in 2001.

He said 64 per cent children were iodine deficient in 2001; the number was 37 per cent in 2011.

He said that some indicators of malnutrition were alarming as stunted growth fraction had increased from 39 per cent in 2001 to 44 per cent in 2011.

MI National Programme Manager Khawaja Masood Ahmad highlighted the progress of the USI Pakistan programme since in 2006.

He said the results of the first ever evaluation of salt iodisation at production level had paved the way for modification of strategy with a focus on monitoring, quality control and enforcement.

He said withdrawal of subsidy on supply of potassium iodate to salt processors was an important step towards sustainability of the programme.

He said the availability of adequately-iodised edible salt at household level was the only easy and cost effective method to fight the menace of IDDs.

Focal persons from the Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan shared programme achievements, issues, constraints and strategies to resolve these issues.

The participants said a three-pronged strategy of strengthening supply mechanism, creating demand through raising awareness and advocacy for compulsory salt iodisation at provincial level had been largely effective.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2014.