Priorities in the Assessment of VitAmin A And iron stAtus in PoPulAtions PANAMA CITY , PANAMA 15 – 17 SEPTEMBER 2010 REPORT

n The assessment of vitamin A status is critical for the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of vitamin A deficiency prevention and treatment programmes. Determination of night blindness is one of the traditional methods of assessing vitamin A deficiency. A variety of subjective and objective methods have been used, however, reported night blindness, the most common method to assess poor dark adaptation, does not correlate strongly with biochemical indicators of vitamin A deficiency. Recently, more standardized field-based methods that utilize a standard stimulus to the eye have been developed, specifically the pupillary response test and the night vision threshold test. These low-cost, non-invasive methods have the potential to provide rapid assessment to determine whether the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency within a population is of public health significance or changes with an intervention. A2.1 ASSESSING NIGHT BLINDNESS AS AN INDICATOR FOR VITAMIN A DEFICIENCY