Malnutrition threatens Kenyan children

However, some get so weak with VAD alone they need treatment for it before other conditions are dealt with.

Kenyatta Hospital admits more than 20 children a week for in-patient care solely to deal with malnutrition.

All the city’s hospitals report that most children arriving with VAD come from low social class areas, such as Kibera, Kawangware and Huruma slums, but more recently they are coming in from working class, well-educated families too, who are feeding children too few vitamin-A rich foods, leading to cases of wealthy, malnourished kids.

VAD increases the risk of malaria infections, turns minor colds and flu into pneumonia, and ups the levels of diarrhoea deaths.

One study in Burkina Faso by Boston University Public Health School found children from 6 months to 3 years old who took Vitamin A and Zinc supplements were 34 per cent less likely to contract malaria.

According to the United Nations, the Vitamin A deficit in Kenya is also more severe than in other developing countries because the country is receiving lower levels of vitamin A supplements – typically running at 62 per cent in other developing nations, but at just 15 per cent in Kenya as a result of diminishing funds.

Research by health economists at the Copenhagen Consensus in May 2008 showed funds spent on Vitamin A and Zinc supplements were the single most effective way of delivering development benefits, with every $1 spent on the supplements delivering $17 of benefits to the economy - through cutting the costs of illness, disability and deaths and increasing output and productivity.

When VAD does strike, one of the first symptoms is night blindness. This can then move on to become full blindness.

VAD can also develop as a condition of suppressed immunity, almost as dangerous to overall health as HIV/Aids.

The deficiency is the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness among children.

Half of the children with VAD-induced blindness die within 12 months, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics.Yet VAD can be reversed with treatment.

“It requires supplemented Vitamin A taken as a drug, but not in foods,” said Professor Nimrod Bwibo a Paediatrician and Lecturer at Nairobi University Medical School.

However, long before children get to the point of needing supplements, medics advise feeding growing children with red vegetables, such as carrots, tomatoes, red onions, orange sweet potatoes and beets.

“These are rich in carotene, which is a rich source of Vitamin A,” said Professor Bwibo.

Medics say a higher intake of vitamin A is particularly critical during the last trimester of pregnancy, as both mother and baby need it more then.