لخّصلي

Results For the present study, a total of 35,480 (Boys: 18,216; Girls: 17,264) rural children of 1-5 year age group was covered from four South Indian States of India.The prevalence of Bitot's spot, an objective ocular clinical sign of VAD was significantly higher among the rural children of socio-economically marginalized sections of the communities such as Scheduled Caste (SC) & Scheduled Tribe (ST), labourers, illiterate mothers and those residing in the households where the sanitary latrine is absent (p<0.001).The prevalence of sub-clinical vitamin A deficiency among the rural children (59.3%) was more than the WHO cut- off of 20%, indicating VAD as a severe public health problem among all the age groups, and the prevalence increased significantly (p<0.001) with increasing age (Table 3).The association between the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency and various socio-demographic particulars is presented in Table-4.The prevalence of ocular manifestations of VAD by states and gender is presented in Table-1.

Results
For the present study, a total of 35,480 (Boys:
18,216; Girls: 17,264) rural children of 1-5 year age group was covered from four South Indian States of India. The prevalence of ocular manifestations of VAD by states and gender is presented in Table-1. In general, the prevalence of night blindness and conjunctival xerosis among the rural pre-school children of South India was 0.1% and 1 %, respectively. While, the prevalence of Bitot’s spot, an objective ocular clinical
sign of VAD (0.6%) was higher than the WHO23 cut-off of 0.5% indicating VAD as a public health problem among pre-school children. The prevalence of Bitot’s spot was ranged from nil in the state of Kerala to a high
1.3% in the state of Andhra Pradesh and its prevalence is a public health concern all the South India states except for the state of Kerala. It is also observed that all the signs and symptoms of vitamin A deficiency were
significantly (p