Public Health and Nutrition

Biography

Biography: Alberto Prieto Patron

Abstract

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) has severe health and economic consequences due to their impact on physical activity, cognitive development and depressed labor productivity. The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition has endorsed iron fortification of condiments as it has been identified as a promising vehicle to reduce IDA due to their high levels of penetration throughout different socio-economic groups. Our objective is to assess the contribution of iron fortified condiments on the reduction of the burden of IDA in Côte D’Ivoire. We build an incidence-prevalence-mortality (IPM) model to estimate the burden of IDA in Côte D’Ivoire. The population was split into three age-groups (preschool-age children, school-age children and adults) and 10 socioeconomic clusters. The study linked the health consequences of IDA to cognitive deficits, lower school achievements and reduced productivity at work. The impact of fortified condiments was assessed by estimating the cost of illness before and after the hemoglobin levels of consumers were adjusted for the fortification effect. The total annual cost of IDA in the Ivorian population from 1 to 65 years of age was estimated at 304 thousand DALYs and over 900 million purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars. The impact of condiments was estimated to reduce the total burden of disease by 21.3 thousand DALYs (7%) and 61 million PPP USD (6%) related to production losses. Iron fortified condiments have a significant impact to reduce the burden of IDA, and can be an impactful element of fortification policies to reduce the burden of iron deficiency anemia.