Lakhasly

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).In case of sub-clinical vitamin A, the mean and median blood vitamin A were below the cut-off level of 20ug/dL, indicating blood vitamin A deficiency and the overall prevalence of sub-clinical VAD among rural children of South India was (59.3%) higher than the WHO cut-off >=20%, 23 suggestive of severe public health problem and it ranged from a low 48.8% in the state of Tamil Nadu to a high 79.4% in Kerala (Table 2).The prevalence of sub-clinical vitamin A deficiency among the rural children (59.3%) was more than the WHO cutoff 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.

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