Vitamin and mineral deficiencies harm one-third of the world's population, says new report

Bulletin of the World Health Organization, March, 2004 by Judith Mandelbaum-Schmid

Micronutrient deficiencies are damaging the health of one-third of the world's population and hampering the economic development of nearly every country in the Southern Hemisphere says a new report released on 21 January at the 2004 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by UNICEF and the Micronutrient Initiative, a Canadian-based non-profit organization.

Vitamin and mineral deficiency: a global damage assessment (available at http://www.unicef.org/media/files/ davos_micronutrient.pdf) concludes that current efforts to remedy micronutrient deficiencies in the world's poorer nations are inadequate and will remain so without new and more aggressive policies. According to the report, micronutrient deficiencies have left 2 billion people living below their physical...