 About 16 percent of women in Nepal suffered from night blindness in their last pregnancy—constituting an alarming public health problem. For four years, Doug Taren, Ph.D., Professor and Associate Dean at the UA Zuckerman College of Public Health, has been working with the Nepal Technical Assistance Program, a local nongovernmental organization, to provide vitamin A to pregnant women as a way to prevent night blindness and thus reduce both maternal and infant deaths.
Night blind women are likely to be severely undernourished, anemic and to suffer from childbirth complications. Consequently, pregnant women with night blindness are five times more likely to die from pregnancy related complications compared to women who are not night blind. In addition, infant deaths rates are 10 times greater in Nepal compared with developed countries. These deaths are often due to infectious diseases. Vitamin A improves the immune system and decreases infectious rates due to diarrhea. In addition to evaluating and comparing two distribution systems, Dr. Taren is determining how Vitamin A supplements affect iron metabolism during pregnancy, birth outcomes (low birth weight, neonatal mortality, maternal mortality) and the interaction between tobacco use and iron deficiency anemia on birth outcomes.
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