This short review and opinion piece is in a new, nicely designed, online magazine from La Leche League.

Click here to open it.

Image: WHO document stating: “In rural South and Southeast Asia, nightblindness is common among women in the latter half of pregnancy, affecting 10-20%.”

The first response to the paper by Professor Latham that is available in the next post was the following:

May 5, 2010 at 12:46 pm | Reply

Unfortunately, the only “fiasco” here is the paper by Dr. Latham. It’s shocking to find that a new journal seeking legitimacy would publish, as its launch, such a meandering, opinionated, unscientific, 28-page diatribe that distorts the evidence on vitamin A and child mortality from over a half-dozen randomized trials reported in peer-reviewed journals, as it attempts to rewrite the history of one of the most successful nutrition-based, child survival strategies in the developing world.

Keith P. West, Jr and Alfred Sommer

_____________________

Six days later I provided the following response to theirs, which ought to be accessible as the fifth comment here, but just in case, I reproduce it below:

Professors West and Sommer make three points:

1. They disparage the author of the article and the journal which published it.
2. They complain about the article, calling it a poorly written diatribe that distorts the evidence (but do not say how).
3. They call universal VAC distribution one of the most successful child survival strategies (the lack of proof of which is one of Professor Latham’s major points).

Instead of encouraging examination of the issues Professor Latham raises, their message seems calculated to squash any such discussion. Who is being unscientific here?

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This is the first article to be published by a free new journal called World Nutrition. While I am not a coauthor, as acknowledged, I provided a good deal of input. I think many will appreciate its call for a new way of behaving among many donor agencies. Click here to open the article by Michael Latham, my professor at Cornell University.

This letter to Lancet expresses my dismay at the way heads of UN agencies are chosen and points out one of the “costs” this incurs.

Click here to open a Word version of the article.

This is Vincent Assey’s PhD dissertation from Bergen University. I was a minor advisor, perhaps the one that was with him longest in his epic journal to a doctorate, starting perhaps 15 years previously in IMCH in Uppsala. Congratulations and kudos for your hard work and persistence, Vincent!

Click here to open the dissertation.

This latest study of PATH’s rice fortification technology, Ultra Rice, found that simply fortifying rice with iron improved iron status more among infants in the vulnerable 6-24 month age group more than iron drops. It was published in the Journal of Nutrition and you can open the full-text version free here.

It was presented at the 15th Congress of La Sociedad Latinoamericana de Nutrición in Sangiago Chile. Click here to access the presentation. SLAN holds congresses every three years. In Chile we were delighted that it received the Kellogg’s Award for the best study in the field of nutrition to emerge from Latin America since the previous meeting. The award is uploaded here. The judges stated that it won for its interesting methodology and “for its creative form of using rice as a vehicle for iron fortification.”

This was published in the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action Mother Support Task Force Newsletter. You can download a copy here. This paper was translated into French by Herrade Hemmerdinger, available here.

This is a report of the first national IDD survey completed in Tanzania, published in BMC Public Health. It shows that after 20 years of effort, both with large-scale distribution of iodized oil capsules, and with iodation of salt, Tanzania has succeeded in making impressive progress in normalizing the iodine status of a previously deficient population. Click here to open the full text pdf file.

The melamine scandal in China resulted in over 50,000 hospitalizations and probably increased breastfeeding there and in countries that were importing milk from China. But it carries a more permanent and universal message about a potentially harmful infant feeding practice that is probably second only to breastfeeding in how widespread it is. Click here to open the prepublication pdf file.

Image: Picture showing kidney stones formed from mineral deposits in the kidney from rafflesbiosoc.blogspot.com/2008/10/melamine.html

This power point presentation was given at the 5th International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Cape Town, South Africa by Margaret Waithaka of PATH Kenya. It summarizes research done by PATH in Kenya with funding from USAID based on a proposal I wrote while at PATH. The main intention was to examine how infant feeding counseling for HIV-infected mothers was being done and how well infants were doing during the period when breastfeeding was stopping. Click here to download the power point.