Vitamin A

Why do we need vitamin A?

Vitamin A helps children stay healthy and fight infections such as respiratory infections, measles and diarrhea.
The body’s immune system needs vitamin A to help fight infections, especially measles.

Preschool age children are more likely to have vitamin A deficiency than are other age groups, as rapid growth makes their bodies unable to store nutrients for very long. Any country with an Under-5 Mortality rate of more than 50 is likely to have a vitamin A public health problem. High dose vitamin A supplementation should be routine in these populations.

Vitamin A protects women before, during, and after pregnancy, and promotes normal fetal development.
Vitamin A-rich foods keep eyes healthy and prevent blindness.
Vitamin A helps eyes stay moist. Vitamin A deficiency causes the inside of the eye to dry out, and may lead to corneal damage resulting in partial or complete blindness. This damage is irreversible.
In households where one child has night blindness or a more severe eye problem related to vitamin A deficiency, it is likely that everyone in the family – women and children in particular – is at risk from the same deficiency

What happens if we don’t get enough vitamin A?

Of the 11 million children who die each year due to common childhood illnesses, it is estimated that up to 23% of them could be saved through improved vitamin A status.
A child may be deficient in vitamin A if he or she:

has trouble seeing at dusk or at night, or in the dark
has ‘dry eyes’
has recently suffered from measles, dehydration, or acute respiratory infection
was not breastfed as a baby
has family members who have ‘dry eyes’ or night blindness

Children who stop playing outside when the sun goes down may suffer from vitamin A deficiency. This is an important warning sign that further problems may develop. A child who has trouble seeing at night or in the dark already has a serious problem.

Pregnant women who notice they have problems seeing in the dark or at dusk may be suffering from vitamin A deficiency.
Pregnant women should be able to see as well as they did before they became pregnant. ‘Night blindness’(the inability to see clearly after dusk) and other vision problems are not normal side-effects of pregnancy. Women suffering this problem must increase their consumption of foods rich in vitamin A, or see a health worker for low-dose vitamin A capsules.

Pregnancy depletes a woman’s vitamin A stores: When a woman does not have adequate vitamin A in her body before becoming pregnant, early fetal development suffers, and the baby is less likely to develop normally later in the pregnancy, too. After birth the mother’s breast milk will contain less vitamin A than it should, so the infant will continue to suffer.

What are the best sources of vitamin A?

Breast milk is the best source of vitamin A for infants and young children, but only when their mothers first consume adequate amounts of vitamin A during and after pregnancy. If a mother has an adequate vitamin A status before and during her pregnancy, then her breast milk will contain enough vitamin A for the child’s first six months. Because breast milk is such a good source of vitamin A, and also protects infants from many dangerous diseases, babies should be fed only breast milk for the first six months of life.

Plant products: Fruits and vegetables provide carotenes, which the body converts to vitamin A. Best choices include: dark yellow and orange vegetables such as pumpkin, sweet potato, squash, bell peppers and carrots; fruits such as papayas, mangos and cantaloupe; and green leafy vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, collards, chard, mustard, turnip and beet greens, cassava greens and curry leaves. Dark green, leafy vegetables, dark yellow-colored fruits or vegetables should be eaten on a daily basis.

Animal sources: These are the ‘easiest’ way to get vitamin A, and only small amounts are required. Best choices include liver, fish (especially dried), eggs and cheese.

Vitamin A fortified foods including oils, margarine and sugar are also good sources of vitamin A where such foods are available.