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A fight against vitamin A deficiency

October 30th, 2018 / Business Mirror, Philippines

‘THE soul, fortunately, has an interpreter—often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter—in the eye,” wrote Charlotte Bronte in her famed Jane Eyre. Marcus Tullius Cicero had the same view when he said: “The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.”
A survey was conducted …

Vitamin-infused sweet potato that helped cut Africa’s infant mortality 25 percent

July 24th, 2018 / Genetic Literacy Project, US

The 2016 World Food Prize went to a group that coordinated the breeding, promotion and distribution of the orange-fleshed sweet potato in Africa. One of [the researchers] on the team was economist Dr. Jan Low. The sweet potato grows well in many parts of Africa. It is not the sweet …

How much longer do we have to wait?

June 19th, 2018 / Manilla Bulletin, Philippines

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) continues to be a major public health concern worldwide. It is estimated that 250,000–300,000 vitamin A-deficient children become blind every year, with half of them dying within a year after getting blind.
Here at home, not only are we not making progress, the problem is getting worse. …

Golden Rice meets food safety standards in three global leading regulatory agencies

May 30th, 2018 / IRRI

GR2E Golden Rice, a provitamin-A biofortified rice variety, completed its third positive food safety evaluation, this time from the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA). In an official response received by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) on 24 May (EST), the US FDA concurred with IRRI’s assessment …

Championing vitamin A–rich orange-fleshed sweet potato in Nigeria

April 23rd, 2018 / International Potato Center

Micronutrient malnutrition is widespread in Nigeria, particularly vitamin A deficiency, which affects at least 30% of the population. Women of reproductive age, infants and young children mostly are vulnerable to micronutrient malnutrition. Many of them suffer multiple deficiencies of essential micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron and zinc, which can …