PRESS CONFERENCE BY NETWORK FOR ELIMINATION OF IODINE DEFICIENCY

Following the launch yesterday at United Nations Headquarters of the Network for the Sustained Elimination of Iodine Deficiency:  A Smart Start in Life, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) sponsored a press conference given by key members of the new network.

Senior Adviser, Micronutrients, UNICEF, Werner Schultink, said that the network's mandate was to support national efforts to ensure that no more children, ever, were born with iodine deficiency.  The network partners included a wide range of organizations.  Among them, the European and North American salt producers, Chinese salt producers, Kiwanis International, the Micronutrient Initiative, the Council for Iron Deficiency Disorders, Center for Disease Control, Emory University, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.

Joining Mr. Schultink were Anatoly Karpov, new Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF to promote salt iodization in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS); Walter Becky, Chief Executive Officer of Morton Salt; Robert Moore, Vice-President, Kiwanis International; and Venkatesh Mannar, President of the Micronutrient Initiative, a Canadian-based international centre specializing in micronutrient nutrition.

Mr. Karpov said it was a shame that people in his part of the world were suffering from iodine deficiency, especially since that problem had been solved some 35 years ago.  The biggest obstacle was lack of public knowledge and education.  People generally had not known that iodine deficiency suppressed brain development in children.  The effects of radiation from the Chernobyl disaster had compounded the problem in his part of the world. 

Mr. Moore described Kiwanis International as a service organization with 8,400 clubs in some 81 nations.  In 1994, Kiwanis International entered into a partnership with UNICEF to eliminate iodine deficiency disorders (IDD).  It pledged to raise $75 million to aid that effort, and it had so far granted more than $60 million to fund IDD-related projects in some 92 nations.  UNICEF had indicated that more than 8 million children were being saved from mental retardation each year because of the projects financed by Kiwanis. 

So, it had had a very successful partnership with UNICEF and other organizations in working to eliminate iodine deficiency, he said.  Kiwanis had members around the world dedicated to protecting their investment and ensuring that iodine deficiency was eliminated forever.  The organization was committed to children's issues and dedicated to helping each child reach his or her full potential.  Clearly, one way to do that was to eliminate iodine deficiency.

Mr. Becky said he was with Morton Salt in the United States, but was representing the North American Salt Institute here.  As an industry with a reach throughout North America and Europe, it stood ready to share its technical expertise in the iodization of salt with producers around the globe.  Probably as important as technical expertise was the ability to better communicate the

benefits of iodized salt to the populations of developing countries.  Salt iodization was one of the great benefits that the industry could bring to the world's children, and it was committed to that effort.

Mr. Mannar said that during the successful launch yesterday morning of the Network he had witnessed a strong reaffirmation by heads of State, including from some of the affected countries, government ministers from donor nations, as well as executives from some of the major salt companies, to the goal of eliminating iodine deficiency by the year 2005.  The initiative had changed the whole salt industry worldwide from a very traditional commodity producing industry to one that had taken on a new purpose and responsibility.  He congratulated industry members for rising to that challenge. 

He said there were three main challenges in completing the job of eliminating iodine deficiency and then sustaining it.  The first was to sustain the progress in countries that had already reached the goal to ensure that they did not slip.  The second was to sustain and accelerate momentum in those countries that were "tantalizingly close" to reaching the goal.  The third challenge was to work in countries facing huge problems in that regard.  The whole experience was a model for other initiatives seeking to add nutrients to food.

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