7 News Belize

Looking Inside The Micronutrient Survey
posted (August 8, 2013)
Last night we told you about the health survey in what are known as Micronutrients Biomarkers – those include Vitamin A, Folic Acid and Vitamin B12 intake.

Well, the expert form the CDC spoke about the regional context of the findings, but the local significance is troubling. The results show that nutrient programmes and interventions for females of reproductive age 15-49 years old have not been working as expected.

Nutritionist Robyn Daly said why the survey results were a surprise:

Robyn Daly - Nutritionist, Ministry of Health
"The results of the survey was quite surprising, it's almost like a wake up call for us to really start to taylor and fine tune what we've been doing in terms of Nutrition Intervention. We have always had vitamins and supplements available but now looking at the results we are seeing that it's not enough so we will keep the supplements, we will still keep reaching our population of our children in schools and our pregnant women when they come to clinics and our children at risk. But now we have to look at on how can we get our nation healthy - what can we do as a nation - looking at all groups."





Natalia Largaespada Baer - Maternal and child health Technical advisor, Ministry of Health
"I think the survery is pointing out that at country level we do have defficiency in micornutrients so the solution cannot be just for one region than the other - it has to be countrywide. But definitely we need to boost the Nurtition Interventions in Southern and Western region and we are recommending the rice fortification - it's a good vehicle for carrying these micronutrients that everyone can have access."

Robyn Daly
"Looking at the results - we still have problems with anemia, as was mentioned before, folate, ferritin and these are all linked to our problems that we will be having and have been having if we don't start to taylor more efforts so looking at supplements we have to do more, we just can't just have the supplements because mothers going to clinics, sometimes they come late - we don't know if they're taking their supplements to time, if they do take supplements. All of these things might be contributing factors for some of our results."

A working session to discuss on food fortification was on Tuesday in Belmopan.

Home | Archives | Downloads/Podcasts | Advertise | Contact Us

7 News Belize