2m children born with mental impairment

Islamabad

Health experts on Wednesday said that approximately two million children annually are born mentally deficient in the country due to iodine deficiency among the pregnant women.

According to them Iodine Deficiency Disorder (IDD) is a major health problem in Pakistan as more than half of the country s population stands at the risk of developing IDDs.

Health expert Dr Sobia Faisal said iodine deficiency had a direct effect on several health economic and other indicators impacting negatively on achieving the MDGs especially 1, 2, 4 and 5 to which Pakistan is a signatory.

She said almost half of newborn in Pakistan were mentally weak due to iodine deficiency in mothers.

Iodine deficiency was the world’s leading preventable cause of mental retardation with over one third of the global population at risk due to a lack of naturally available iodine in the soil she added.

She said IDD occurs when people do not receive iodine in their diets on a regular basis and it can be easily corrected by adding iodine to salt.

IDD affected individual intelligence and could lower the IQ of people by 15 points she added.

She said the problem of iodine deficiency was especially serious for pregnant women and young children.

During pregnancy even milder deficiencies could retard fatal development and result in physical and mental retardation.

She said other effects of IDD included goitre abnormal physical development reproductive loss and severe mental and physical retardation and an irreversible condition known as cretinism.

Dr Sharif Astori from Federal Government Polyclinic (FGPC) said fortunately IDDs could be prevented through the introduction of relatively simple and inexpensive methods like iodized salt.

There had been significant rise in consumer demand he said and stressed for effectively implement Universal Salt Iodization (USI) which was the quickest and cheapest strategy to address this problem.

He said all iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) could be prevented with just one teaspoon of iodine consumed in tiny amounts on regular basis over lifetime at a very little cost.

He said that media could play a vital and positive role in creating awareness about iodized salt among people and sensitizing general public on the consequences of iodine deficiencies and its disorders.