In the late 1980s and early 1990s, nutrition was an important part of the support the Swedish Internation Development Authority provided to improve health in developing countries. This article, in the now-defunct Uppsala University journal NU, News on health Care in Developing Countries, describes the support SIDA was providing to the control of iodine deficiency disorders in 1994.

Click here to download the scanned pdf file.

IMAGE: Children in a northern Bangladeshi village put their heads back to show if they have a 1B goiter, c 1993.

 

Image: “Love”, a painting by Sunil Jayantha Edanayake, 17, from a Worldview International Foundation contest.

Sweden has one of the highest levels of celiac disease (life-long gluten intolerance) in the world, possibly because nearly all mothers follow the advice of health professionals and introduce large quantities of high-gluten wheat-based follow-up formula to their infants at several months of age at the same time as they greatly reduce how much they breast feed. The following is a letter sent by Ted Greiner and Elisabeth Kylberg to the journal Lancet on August 3, 1994. Unfortunately, Lancet did not see fit to publish it. Sadly, Swedish health authorities have now decided to follow the advice of Judo, et al., and after years of recommending exclusive breastfeeding for six months, many if not most pediatricians recommend adding the gluten-containing follow-up formula even earlier–let this be a lesson to others!

(more…)