Vitamin A deficiency is a very common problem in the world. In saying that, we are relying on statistics gathered by the World Health Organization (WHO), which happens to be the body from which we can get the most authoritative information on these sorts of issues, as one of its mandates is to keep tabs on them. In fact, according to the WHO figures we are referring to, a third of all children in the world have vitamin A deficiency. That is to say one in every three children (under the age of five) suffers from a deficiency of the vitamin. It gets sadder when we are told that the situation is so bad that up to half a million kids go blind on account of that deficiency each year. We are looking at kids who were born with perfect ability to see, but who, due to lack of vitamin A, end up becoming blind people (and going through all the problems that a blind person is prone to). And it gets even sadder when it emerges that almost 0.7 million kids under the age of life end up dying at that very young age, when they haven't even experienced life, on account of vitamin A deficiency.
So, why is vitamin A deficiency so common?
Kids Vitamin
Well, as it turns out, one of the reasons as to why vitamin A deficiency is so common is poverty. It emerges that a huge number of those people living with vitamin A deficiency are in the developing world (especially in Africa and South East Asia), where the levels of poverty are very high. Poverty itself, of course, doesn't cause vitamin A deficiency - but rather the inability to afford the foods that are rich in the vitamin, which is brought about by the poverty. The truth of the matter is that many of the people in the said regions of the world - who are living below the poverty line - can't afford a balanced and varied diet. They mostly eat the same foods day in, day out. And if those foods happen to be foods that don't contain vitamin A, then they have absolutely no way of obtaining the vitamin. Where the said people are able to obtain the foods from which they can get vitamin A, it turns out that they don't access adequate amounts of them - so the deficiency persists.
Ignorance about the importance of the vitamin (and its natural sources) is another cause of vitamin A deficiency. We may be looking at the people who can access (and who can afford) the foods that are rich in vitamin A but who, due to ignorance, don't consume them - and who therefore end up suffering from a deficiency of the vitamin.
Early weaning of kids from breast-milk to solid foods is yet another major cause of vitamin A deficiency in kids.
There are some other more 'technical' causes of vitamin A deficiency. Those are like where the body is unable to utilize the vitamin - but the cases of vitamin A deficiency occurring on this account are few and far between. Most of the time, vitamin A deficiency turns out to be as a result of the previously explored factors like poverty, ignorance and early weaning of kids from breast milk to solid foods.