文本框: SURVEY ON VITAMIN A DEFICIENCY AMONG CHILDREN UNDER-6-YEARS IN CHINA Lin Liangming, Liu Yulin, Ma Guanfu, Tan Zangwen, Zhang Xinli et al Capital Institute of Pediatrics, Beijing, China Objective: To determine the prevalence rate and distributions on regions of VAD in China among children under 6 years. Methods: About 8600 stratified -randomly sampled children under 6 years in 14 cities and 28 counties of 14 provinces were under survey. In each selected city or county. The progress of this project was taken by 3-4 scientists and pediatric experts from Capital Institute of Pediatrics (CIP) with working staff of provincial MCH hospitals and local MCH hospitals. The fieldwork of this project consisted of questionnaire of family and children's nutrition information and collection of serum samples. Serum Vitamin A assay were performed by fluorescent spectro-photometry in laboratory. Results: 8669 children under (2877 in urban area, 5791 in rural area) were surveyed in 14 provinces, among them, 4629 were male and 4040 were female. 8 cases of night blindness and 7 cases of xerophthalmia were found among the children from 2 to 5 years old. 61 mother of this group of children were also found suffering from night blindness. All cases of night blindness and xerophthalmia for both children and mother were residents in rural area. There were totally 1018 children accounting for 11.7% of all were diagnosed to be the Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) according to the standard of serum Vitamin A concentration being below or equal to 20µg/dl. The prevalence of VAD were 15.0% in rural and 5.8% in urban. In terms of three strata, i.e. coastal, inland and remote, the prevalence of VAD were 5.8%, 11.5% and 16.8%, respectively. The mean serum Vitamin A concentration were 30.4 µg/dl for national, 34.2µg/dl for urban and 28.5 for rural. In terms of mean serum vitamin A level, no significant difference was found between male and female, but the difference by age was remarkable. The surum VitA≤20µg/dl was 33.4% among the children below 6 months, the figure was only 8% among those aged 4-5 years. Conclusions: Vitamin A Deficiency did exist in Chinese area especially in remote and poverty vounties and the intervention with Vitamin A supplementation will be required to at these regions. 0962