Doctors cry murder at Govt decision to allow non-iodised salt

Doctors cry murder at Govt decision to allow non-iodised salt
NIRMALA GEORGE

NEW DELHI, MAY 13: Health specialists and nutritionists are outraged by the Government's proposal to withdraw the compulsory iodisation of salt, describing it as a retrograde step which will cause incalculable damage to successive generations of children.

In an inexplicable decision, the Union Health Ministry on Thursday came out with a proposal to withdraw the compulsory iodisation of salt. No reasons have been given for this abrupt turnaround in policy.

The Prime Minister had been approached by a group of Gandhians and Sarvodaya leaders saying the livelihood of some 6,000-odd small salt producers in Gujarat had been affected by the salt iodisation programme.

``Government surveys have shown that iodine deficiency is found in almost all parts of the country", says V Ramalingaswami, former head of the Indian Council of Medical Research whose 10-year work on the subject ultimately resulted in the Central Council of Health deciding in the mid-80s to adopt a nationwide programme of salt iodisation.

Ramalingaswami, through his research in the Kangra Valley, established that nutritional iodine deficiency was the cause of endemic goitre in the Terai region of UP. ``The world is moving towards universal iodisation of salt. We are moving backwards and it will adversely affect the mental health of generations of children,'' he said.

The Indian Medical Association, the largest professional body representing the medical fraternity in the country, has already come out with a strong statement opposing the move and urging the Prime Minister not to take such a retrograde step.

For long, doctors have known the ill-effects caused by the lack of adequate iodine intake. Iodine is a key component of the hormone thyroxin. If there is a deficiency of thyroxin in the body, the gland enlarges as a compensatory mechanism to meet the bodily needs.

But more alarming are the effects of an iodine-deprived diet in children. It can lead to severe and irreversible brain damage in the foetus and infants. Iodine Deficient Disorders (IDD) in children result in cretinism, with stunted growth, mental and physical sluggishness and low IQ levels.

``The effects of iodine deficiency are pervasive throughout life,'' says NKochupillai, Professor and Head of Department of Endocrinology at AIIMS, who has spent a lifetime in researching nutritional iodine deficiency and worked with Ramalingswami as well.

According to C Gopalan, Director, Nutrition Foundation of India, the Government may be lulled into a false sense of security about goitre no longer being a problem. ``But they do not realise that this is the direct outcome of salt iodisation which has been in operation for two decades now.''

Describing the move as an ``extremely retrograde step being done merely for political reasons,'' Gopalan says he has written to the Government warning that it would erode the quality of human resources in the country.

The Planning Commission, which had monitored the national salt iodisation programme, also reached the irrevocable conclusion that millions of children had been saved from cretinism following the implementation of the programme.

Which is why the doctors find this reversal so shocking. ``This is something completely unscientific. Jai Vigyan that the Government keeps touting, is just empty rhetoric. As a primary courtesy to science in this country, at least they could have consulted the scientists involved in this effort,'' says Kochupillai.