Accra, July 25, GNA - About 120,000 Ghanaian children are born annually with intellectual impairment due to lack of iodine intake during pregnancy.

Out of this number 15,600 of them suffer severe impairment and become harder to motivate and educate and are less productive throughout their lives.

Mr Jacob Armah, Head of the Nutrition Unit of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), told a press briefing in Accra on a publicity campaign on achieving the Universal Salt Iodisation in Ghana that Iodine deficiency lowered the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) of such population as much as 15 IQ points resulting in poor school performance and high school dropout rate.

The campaign, which will be launched in August, would have special documentaries about Ghana's progress as well as television and radio programmes to raise awareness on the need to consume iodated salt to fight deficiencies such as causes of severe and irreversible brain damage; mental retardation; cretinism; goitre; increase risk of still birth and miscarriage in pregnant women.

Mr Armah noted that Ghana in 1996 passed a legislation to enforce iodisation of salt and that the Food and Drugs Board Act 523 (Amendment) made iodisation of salt for both human and animal consumption mandatory. He said consumption of iodated salt in Ghana had increased from 0.7 per cent in 1995, when it was first introduced to 74 per cent in 2005. "While the national average is steadily rising it is still far from the 90 per cent Universal Iodisation (USI) target; the performances of about six regions - Central, Eastern, Greater Accra, Northern, Upper East and Volta have consistently fallen below the national figure". He said Ghana and Senegal were the two main salt producing countries in West Africa with about 71 per cent households having access to iodised salt and Nigeria having the largest market. Mr Armarh expressed regret that more than 25 per cent of Ghana's population was still exposed to iodine deficiency, which put the population at risk of deficiency disorders and its consequences. Mr John Odame-Darkwah, Head of the Industrial Support Service of the FDB, said national strategy for achieving USI was under review to shift focus to the supply side objectives and prioritise activities and resource allocations.

He said the new priority interventions would aim at building capacity of small-scale producers to comply with the FDB Act and that the law would be enforced.

"The major challenge will be to ensure that supply matches with demand now that the awareness is catching up with people and the consumption rate is also rising high."

Mr David Kobina Oppong, Coordinator of the Presidential Initiative on Salt, said the re-engineering of existing salt works and production when completed would improve production efficiency.

He said with the current level of salt production of about 250,000 tonnes a year, Ghana could meet most of its domestic consumption and also export to neighbouring countries. 25 July 06