|
|
 |
|
| Opportunities & Exposures |
Food for Thought
Rolf Carriere
08/02/2004
|
What do successful corporate outsourcing, a child’s report card, lower health
care costs and one of the oldest industries in China have in common? Something
minuscule affects them all—and no, I am not referring to the beating of a
butterfly’s wings in Katmandu. In fact, the answer is vitamins (like A, B, C and
folic acid) and minerals (like iron and zinc). In an effort to enhance worker
productivity around the world, improve children’s learning capacity, increase
resistance to infectious diseases and cut birth defects in half, major food
industries—including soy sauce producers in China—fortify their products with
vitamins and minerals.
In high-income countries, we take it for granted, if
we think of it at all, that iodized salt is widely available to protect us from
thyroid malfunction and mental retardation, and that the flour in our bread is
enriched with iron and vitamins. But this kind of nutritional safety net does
not yet exist in most developing countries.
While in high-income countries we
can compensate for nutritional shortfalls with pills, in developing countries,
where vegetable or animal food sources are often scarce, neither the market
economy nor the health delivery system has found an effective way to deliver
supplements to those most in need.
Lack of vitamins and minerals can be
devastating. In the next 12 months, economic development specialists estimate:
• 1 million children below the age of 5 will die in large part due to a lack of vitamin A;
• 50,000 women will die
during or soon after childbirth from iron deficiency anemia;
• 19 million infants will be born with impaired mental capacity due to a lack of iodine in salt;
• as many as 100,000
children will be born with preventable physical defects such as spina
bifida because their mothers had too little folic acid in their diets
before conception.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
