Improvement of nightblindness situation in children through simple nutrition education intervention with the parents

The impact of a simple nutrition education intervention was studied on the nightblind situation of children under 6 years of age in a coastal area of Bangladesh. Parents were given nutritional education and motivation by various means for 18 months to grow more vegetables and fruits rich in vitamin A and to feed these to their children. Treatment of the already nightblind children to full recovery with vitamin A capsules created confidence in the study personnel. A follow‐up survey after the intervention period showed that the level of nutritional knowledge of the parents on vitamin A improved highly significantly. Vegetable production per family and actual vegetable consumption per child increased. Intake of cooking oil also increased and the type of the oil consumed changed from mustard to soybean, the latter being half as costly as the former. As a consequence of these improvements, the prevalence of nightblindness amongst children under 6 years dropped from 4.1% to 0.47% and there was no new case of total blindness in the study population. Analysis of the results indicate that this improved nightblindness situation was due to increased nutritional knowledge of the household heads irrespective of their occupation, income, and the level of their formal education in school. The success of such a simple education intervention programme was considered dependent on the confidence established in the household heads and the consequent positive response made to the projected messages.