Articles

• Striking progress against IDD in Pakistan

  The population of Pakistan has surged from 34 million when the country was founded in 1947 to 180 million today, including 89 million children. Maternal and child nutrition remain major challenges. The 2011 National Nutrition Survey (NNS) found many indicators of malnutrition actually worsened over the past decade. However, there was a remarkable improvement in iodine nutrition in children and young women - one of the few ‘bright spots’ in the report...
  

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• USI ensures adequate iodine intake in Canada

  Iodine deficiency was prevalent in most of central and western Canada until the 1920s, when efforts to eliminate endemic goiter with the use of iodized salt were introduced. Iodine deficiency can lead to goiter, stunted physical and intellectual development, stillbirths, and spontaneous abortions - these have been virtually eliminated in Canada through salt iodization. In contrast to the U.S., where both iodized and non-iodized salt are available, all table salt in Canada is iodized with 100 ppm potassium iodide, which corresponds to approximately 77 g iodine per gram of salt (1). Iodization of table salt was made mandatory by law in Canada in 1949...
  

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• Restructuring the global coordination of IDD control programs

  During 2012, extensive discussions amongst and between the members of ICCIDD and The Network for the Sustained Elimination of IDD culminated in an agreement by both Boards to consolidate the two organizations into a single new entity, the ‘ICCIDD Global Network’. The reasons were several. It was felt that two separate entities working toward the same goal could lead to redundancy of efforts and confusion on regional/national guidance...
  

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• A day in the life of the Araltuz salt facility: high quality iodized salt for Kazakhstan

  In former times of the USSR, the production volume of Araltuz salt reached 600,000 tons annually. This amount was enough to provide many of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union. Now it’s only 250,000 tons which are sold exclusively in Kazakhstan. Times have changed and even its salt has become different…
  

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• Flawed approach in the GBD 2010 for iodine deficiency compromises its findings

  (Michael Zimmermann)

  The Global Burden of Disease 2010 was an ambitious effort to describe the global distribution and causes of a wide array of major diseases, injuries, and health risk factors. The results show that infectious diseases, maternal and child illness, and malnutrition now cause fewer deaths and less illness than they did twenty years ago. Full reports were in the Lancet in December 2012 www.thelancet.com/themed/global-burden-of-disease). Additional interactive data available at: www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org. From 1990 to 2010, there was remarkable progress against IDD worldwide...
  

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• Breakthroughs in Bangladesh boost iodized salt quality

  (Chandrakant Pandav)

  On the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers meet in Bangladesh to form the world’s largest delta. Extremely fertile, yet vulnerable to floods depleting iodine from soils, this low-lying country supports a population of around 150 million people. Nearly 40 per cent are children. Although Bangladesh has a growing economy, half of these children continue to live below the international poverty line. In 1993, the first national IDD survey in Bangladesh found a 47% goiter rate and low iodine intakes in over 2/3rds of the population. Responding to this threat, the Bangladeshi government passed iodized salt legislation in the mid-1990s...
  

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