Case 4: Reducing Child Mortality With Vitamin A in Nepal

E nveloped in poverty and burdened by its onerous topography, Nepal is hardly an obvious birthplace for a public health success story. And yet, the marriage of scientific and operational innovations provided the foundation for a national program that saves hundreds of thousands of children’s lives. In the early 1980s, a series of studies demonstrated that vitamin A supplementation could reduce child mortality; two of them were carried out in Nepal.1,2 Following this discovery, Nepal conceived of the National Vitamin A Program to distribute small, red vitamin A capsules to millions of children each year. Its creative design overcame the country’s economic and geographic hurdles by harnessing local capacity and relying on new channels of public health delivery—bridging the once insurmountable gap between where the formal health sector Case drafted by Jessica Gottlieb. Case 4 Reducing Child Mortality With Vitamin A in Nepal