Vitamin A plays a very important role in the eyes. Vitamin A deficiency causes night blindness, leading to dry eyes, keratomalacia, and blindness.
Therefore, parents and everyone need to know how to prevent, detect the disease early and treat it properly to avoid blindness in children.
What are the signs that help detect the disease early?
The earliest manifestation of vitamin A deficiency is night blindness: at dusk, young children may mistake other people for their mothers, young children have difficulty walking, often stumble over objects in the house, or have to follow the wall to walk. For older children, they do not dare to run after their friends to play, often sitting still in the corner of the house or on the doorstep. While eating, children often miss their food plates. Dry conjunctiva (or dry whites of the eyes): if healthy, the whites of the eyes of children should be evenly wet, shiny, and transparent. When the eyes are dry, the whites of the eyes become dry, rough, and no longer wet and shiny. Gradually, the whites of the eyes of children become opaque, turning pale yellow or pale gray, and wrinkled. White foamy clumps appear in the whites of children’s eyes like soap bubbles. At that time, children often blink, or look down when going to bright places.
In the stage of corneal maceration (dry black eye), in healthy children, the black eye should be smooth, evenly wet, transparent, and look black. When the eye is dry, the black eye becomes opaque, rough, and looks hazy like a glass covered in mist. If the disease is not detected and treated promptly, within a few days, the black eye will be crushed, ulcerated, forming a dirty yellow ulcer, then the eye will be perforated and infected. If it is too late to take the child to the hospital for examination and treatment at this stage, it will definitely leave a corneal scar causing blindness, more seriously, the eye may have to be removed. In children, dry eye is often accompanied by other serious diseases such as malnutrition, diarrhea, prolonged digestive disorders, pneumonia, bronchitis, measles… which can lead to rapid death.
Parents or caregivers who see their children with the above symptoms must quickly take them to the nearest medical facility for examination. Once it is determined that the child has xerophthalmia, they need to immediately give them a high dose of vitamin A 200,000 IU. If vitamin A 200,000 IU is not available, the child can be given 4 tablets of vitamin A 50,000 IU. For remote areas where vitamin A cannot be purchased immediately, the child can be fed 1-2 ounces of cooked pork or beef liver every day. It is best to take the child to the pediatric department of a hospital to combine treatment for malnutrition and other infectious diseases.
Preventing vitamin A deficiency in children
Pregnant and breastfeeding women need to eat enough food and nutrients every day, drink plenty of water and get enough rest to ensure that their children are born healthy. Note that during the first 3 months of pregnancy, women should not take high doses of vitamin A because it can cause birth defects in the fetus. It is necessary to breastfeed children from birth until they are 24 months old or older. From the 4th month onwards, it is necessary to give children solid foods to ensure that food provides enough vitamin A, protein and fat as well as daily minerals. Vitamin A is abundant in foods of animal origin such as liver, egg yolks, fish, milk but is very low in lean meat. Provitamin A is abundant in fruits and tubers that are red or dark yellow such as gac fruit, pumpkin, mango, persimmon, sweet potato, turmeric, chicken eggs, etc.; Dark green vegetables such as spinach, mustard greens, Malabar spinach, amaranth, jute, sweet potato leaves, dill, cauliflower… When children are 6 months old and older, they need to take high doses of vitamin A supplements every 6 months according to the schedule of the health agency. When detecting the first signs of vitamin A deficiency in children such as night blindness, dry whites of the eyes, it is necessary to take the child immediately to a medical facility for examination and timely vitamin A supplementation to prevent blindness in children.
