The government targets to give vitamin A to over 22 million children on Saturday, Feb 9 in a campaign that was deferred due to \u2018problems\u2019 in textures of capsules.<\/p>\n
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Health Minister Zahid Maleque announced the date and targets for the Vitamin A Plus campaign at a press conference on Thursday.<\/p>\n
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More than 2.5 million children between six months and 11 months will get one blue-coloured capsule while 19.5 million others between 12 months to 59 months will get one high-powered red-coloured dose on that day, according to the minister.<\/p>\n
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The Vitamin A Plus campaign, which is conducted twice a year in Bangladesh, had been scheduled for Jan 19, but the Institute of Public Health Nutrition halted it citing \u2018unavoidable\u2019 reasons.<\/p>\n
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But officials said they postponed the campaign due to \u201cproblems in the textures of the capsules\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Liquid vitamin A is squeezed into child\u2019s mouth by cutting off the tip of the capsules.<\/p>\n
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State Minister for Health Md Murad Hasan later said the problems were found in red capsules supplied by Aztec Pharmaceuticals, an Indian firm that won the job through a legal battle.<\/p>\n
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The health minister said on Thursday that the government was investigating the postponement of the campaign.<\/p>\n
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Supplementary nutrition in the form of a vitamin A capsule is vital for good infant and child health, growth, and development.<\/p>\n
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This is also accepted as an essential part of child survival programmes as one capsule of vitamin A given at least twice a year to children 6 to 59 months of age can reduce under-5 child mortality by 24 percent.<\/p>\n
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Vitamin A strengthens children\u2019s immune system, reduce frequency of diarrhea and measles, and prevent night blindness.<\/p>\n
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Bangladesh has cut night blindness to 0.04 percent in recent years from 3.76 percent in 1982 through this campaign.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The government targets to give vitamin A to over 22 million children on Saturday, Feb 9 in a campaign that was deferred due to ‘problems’ in textures of capsules. Health Minister Zahid Maleque announced the date and targets for the Vitamin A Plus campaign at a press conference on Thursday. More than 2.5 million children between six months and 11 months will get one blue-coloured capsule while 19.5 million others between 12 months to 59 months will get one high-powered red-coloured dose on that day, according to the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":17263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,3,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17264,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17261\/revisions\/17264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}