- Vitamin A deficiency puts over 250 million children worldwide at risk of blindness (16).
Every year up to one half of a million children become partly or totally blind. Twothirds
of these children die within a few months of going blind (8). Even moderate
levels of deficiency can lead to stunted growth, increased susceptibility and severity of infections and higher death rates. Vitamin A deficiency is the single greatest cause of
preventable childhood blindness (16;40).