Report: priorities in the assessment of vitamin A and iron status and in populations, Panama City, Panama, 15-17 September 2010

Overview

WHO guidance on the use of indicators for assessing a population’s vitamin and mineral status and the application of indicators for monitoring and evaluating intervention programmes aims to assist Member States and their partners in establishing a micronutrient monitoring and evaluation system.

On 15–17 September 2010, a meeting in Panama City, Panama, was convened by the Department of Nutrition for Health and Development of the World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with the International Micronutrient Malnutrition Prevention and Control (IMMPaCt) programme, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to discuss and initiate the work of updating WHO guidelines on indicators for the assessment of vitamin A and iron status.

In preparation for this meeting, four background papers were commissioned on historical and practical uses of assessing night blindness as an indicator for vitamin A deficiency, biomarkers of vitamin A status, the rationale for selecting and standardizing iron status indicators, and the influence of infection and inflammation on biomarkers of nutritional status, with an emphasis on vitamin A and iron. The background papers, in addition to the scoping document prepared by technical staff at the Department of Nutrition for Health and Development, were presented and discussed during the consultation. This report summarizes the discussions and presents the background papers.