<\/p>\n
Close to 85 percent of the estimated 16 million people living in Malawi have gained access to Vitamin A through the sugar fortification exercise the Government of Malawi launched five years ago in collaboration with Illovo Sugar Malawi Limited, Unicef, Usaid and Irish Aid.<\/p>\n
The exercise has also helped to reduce Vitamin A deficiency across all age groups to less than five percent.<\/p>\n
The findings are contained in the 2015-2016 Malawi Micronutrient Survey conducted by the National Statistical Office at the request of the Ministry of Health.<\/p>\n
Previously, Malawi was one of many countries in Africa where many people suffered from micro-nutrient deficiencies.<\/p>\n
According to the Department of Nutrition, HIV and Aids, prior to the fortification programme in 2012, 22 percent of children aged below five years of age; 8.5 percent older school going children; 1.6 percent of non-pregnant women; and 0.2 percent of all men suffered from Vitamin A deficiency.<\/p>\n
Illovo Sugar Malawi says the company has spent K1.1 billion in the 2016\/2017 financial year alone to fortify 114, 684 tonnes of sugar for the domestic market.<\/p>\n
To this day, fortification of sugar at Illovo sugar mills at Nchalo and Dwangwa continues and the company\u2019s Communications Manager, Ireen Phalula, said Illovo will continue with the initiative in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur social investment commitment to the people of Malawi is an important component of our continuing business activities in the country. Vitamin A fortification has allowed us to impact directly on the health of everyday Malawians and we are extremely proud of that contribution,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Vitamin A deficiency is associated with a number of serious health implications such as night blindness, bone growth, child development and increased risk from infections.<\/p>\n
Going back to 2012 and in an effort to mitigate this serious medical problem, the Government of Malawi decided to make use of the sugar manufacturing process as it provided an attractive vehicle for Vitamin A fortification because it is more widely consumed in amounts that are large enough to provide a significant intake of the micro-nutrient.<\/p>\n
Their decision was backed up by a consumption study conducted by the Department of Nutrition in 2009, which showed that consumption of sugar among children in Malawi was sufficient to qualify the commodity as an efficient conduit for Vitamin A fortification.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Close to 85 percent of the estimated 16 million people living in Malawi have gained access to Vitamin A through the sugar fortification exercise the Government of Malawi launched five years ago in collaboration with Illovo Sugar Malawi Limited, Unicef, Usaid and Irish Aid. The exercise has also helped to reduce Vitamin A deficiency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":48613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57520,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57515\/revisions\/57520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}