Safety tests for Vitamin A capsules

On August 28, 2014, The Daily Star and other prominent dailies and other media outlets reported that in a suo moto rule, an HC bench of Justice Hassan Arif and Justice Abu Taher Md Saifur Rahman said the government should not distribute vitamin A capsules in any national health program without adequate clinical testing for safety and integrity. We presume this ruling was driven by the need to protect children from adulterated or substandard products, in this case imported vitamin A capsules.         Several media outlets have framed the honourable justice's ruling as a call for 'clinical trials', which we suggest is an unintentional misuse of a specific scientific term. A “clinical trial” refers to an extensive evaluation of the public health impact of vitamin A itself – a research question that has long been answered by large clinical (community) trials across South Asia. Recognized by the UN Agencies as one of the most cost-effective public health interventions of all time, vitamin A has been shown to reduce childhood mortality, blindness and hearing loss from ear infection. Vitamin A supplementation programmes are underway in over 70 countries, with children under age 5 receiving a single vitamin A supplement twice a year. In Bangladesh, the government's national vitamin A programme is completing its 40th year of operation, longer than in any other country of the world, protecting the sight, lives and hearing of many thousands of young children each year.

We encourage the ministries concerned to act rapidly to establish the necessary testing and quality control benchmarks to meet this need, allowing this valuable programme to continue without disruption.   

Dr. Alain B. Labrique, PhD, MHS, MS &
Prof. Keith P. West, Jr., DrPH, RD
Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University