• Orange maize has been conventionally bred (non-genetically modified organism – GMO) to have higher levels of beta-carotene, a naturally occurring plant pigment that the body then converts into vitamin A.

By STEPHEN KAPAMBWE –
Just ahead of the World Food Day, a study published in the American Journal of clinical nutrition has established that orange maize increases vitamin A storage in the body.
This maize has been conventionally bred (non-genetically modified organism – GMO) to have higher levels of beta-carotene, a naturally occurring plant pigment that the body then converts into vitamin A.
Lack of sufficient vitamin A causes blindness in up to 500,000 children annually and increases the risk of death from disease (such as diarrhoea in children).
Vitamin A deficiency is widely prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa. Foods that are good sources of vitamin A, such as orange fruits, dark leafy vegetables, or meat, are not always available, or may be too expensive in some regions.
In many African countries, people eat large amounts of staple foods like cassava or maize.
For example, in Zambia, people eat up to a pound of white maize daily.
However, this white maize provides no beta-carotene.
Switching to orange maize, which is rich in beta-carotene, could potentially provide maize-dependent populations with up to half their daily vitamin A needs.
In this controlled efficacy study, children from the Eastern Province of Zambia were randomly assigned to three feeding groups and received either white maize, orange maize, or a daily vitamin A supplement.
After three months, both groups that received either the orange maize or vitamin A supplements showed significant increases in their total body stores of vitamin A, with no changes observed in the group that received white maize.
Lead scientist Sherry Tanumihardjo said, “We were surprised to find that most of the children in this study already had substantial stores of vitamin A. We attribute this to the success of fortifying sugar with vitamin A, the provision of vitamin A supplements to young children, and perhaps better diets.
“Yet, despite having adequate vitamin A stores, we still saw this store increase in children as a result of eating the orange maize.
So, I am confident that orange maize would be especially effective in increasing body stores of vitamin A in populations suffering from vitamin A deficiency.”
Unlike the form of vitamin A found in supplements and fortified foods, the body regulates conversion of beta-carotene into vitamin A, and consuming high levels of beta-carotene is not harmful to health.
Several orange maize varieties have been released by the governments of Zambia and Nigeria.
In Zambia, HarvestPlus has provided orange maize to more than 10,000 farming households and is now working with the private sector with the goal of reaching 100,000 famers by 2015. HarvestPlus Country Manager in Zambia, Eliab Simpungwe, said, “The orange maize has been embraced by consumers once they have had a chance to taste it. When they also
understand the benefits of vitamin A in the diets they are all the more enthusiastic about orange maize.”
HarvestPlus leads a global effort to improve nutrition and public health by developing and deploying staple food crops that are rich in vitamins and minerals.
These staples foods are cassava, maize, and orange sweet potato that provide more vitamin A.
Others are beans and pearl millet that provide more iron; and rice and wheat that provide more zinc.
HarvestPlus is part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a research programme on agriculture for nutrition and health.
CGIAR is a global agricultural research partnership for a food secure future. It works with public and private sector partners in more than 40 countries.
The orange maize varieties released are also high yielding, disease and virus resistant, and drought tolerant.
The Zambian Government has officially recognised biofortification, which it includes in the National Food and Nutrition Strategic Plan for Zambia 2011-2015.
National Food and Nutrition Commission Acting Executive Director Musonda Mofu, who was also on the study team, said there were still many areas where vitamin A deficiency remained a problem in Zambia.
“Food-based approaches such as orange maize can provide people–especially women and children–with a good portion of their daily vitamin A needs through nshima or other traditional foods made from maize, that we Zambians eat everyday. For us, this is cost-effective and a safe approach to improving nutrition,” he said.
HarvestPlus and its partners have developed and disseminated other conventionally bred crops to provide needed vitamins and minerals in the diet.
The crops are vitamin A cassava (Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria), vitamin A orange sweet potato (throughout Sub-Saharan Africa) and iron beans (Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda).
Zinc, wheat and rice and iron pearl millet have been targeted to South Asia.
Biofortified orange maize is as efficacious as a vitamin A supplement in Zambian children even in the presence of high liver reserves of vitamin A.
Maize is the third most important cereal food in the world, and is a staple food for more than one billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
It is high in carbohydrates but lacks essential micro-nutrients such as vitamin A.
Maize exhibits tremendous genetic diversity, and there are many types with high levels of beta-carotene, a naturally occurring plant pigment that is converted by the body into vitamin A when the maize is eaten.
This genetic diversity has been used to conventionally breed new varieties of maize that are high-yielding and also rich in vitamin A.
HarvestPlus has partnered with many institutions to develop and test orange maize, including the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI) and Purdue University.

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‘Focus on HIV prevention tools’

By MIRIAM ZIMBA
THE recently concluded first HIV Research for Prevention (HIV R4P) Global Conference held in Cape Town South Africa has emphasised the need to focus on opportunities and obstacles in availing new and emerging HIV prevention tools.
The more than 1,300 delegates to the conference largely agreed that developing new tools to communities that need them most translates to a battle almost won.
“Making those tools available, and helping individuals in need of HIV prevention to understand, access and use them safely and effectively is a critically important part of the task. The R4P meeting brings researchers and practitioners from across the world together to focus their attention on addressing this global challenge,” the conference
heard.
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) poses as a new and promising HIV prevention approach that involves the use of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) by HIV-negative people to prevent HIV infection.
Medical experts say because only HIV-negative people should use PrEP, to avoid the possibility of developing drug resistance, regular HIV testing for PrEP users is required.
HIV R4P co-chair at the conference Eric Hunter said research successes in the lab, field and in clinical trial settings can only save lives if  deliberate efforts are made to focus equal energy and dedication to making those advances available to people at risk of HIV.
“Implementation and access challenges can be as complex as any we encounter in the lab, and they are critically important to global efforts to reduce and one day end this epidemic,” he said.
HIV R4P is the world’s first and only scientific meeting dedicated exclusively to biomedical HIV prevention research.
Through both abstract and non-abstract driven sessions, the conference sought to support cross-fertilisation between research on HIV vaccines, microbicides, PrEP, treatment as prevention and other biomedical prevention approaches.
The conference also focused on targeting Biomedical Preventions to Different At-Risk Populations, which address the critical challenges involved in engaging communities at risk in HIV prevention research and in making new and effective prevention methods available to key populations.
Those challenges can be especially acute when people at risk for HIV are stigmatized, impoverished, have less social power or, in many cases, are criminalised.
The Desmond Tutu HIV centre noted that in order to reduce and end this epidemic, researchers, policy makers and funders must recognise and support the human rights of all people affected by this epidemic, and must commit to work with them as full partners in the effort to end it.
The first Global Research Conference Dedicated Exclusively to Biomedical HIV Prevention Addresses Progress and Obstacles in Getting HIV Prevention to Millions in Need, was held from October 28 to 31, 2014.
This conference was held under the theme ‘Developing new tools against HIV is only half the battle. Making those tools available is a critically important part of the research needed for HIV prevention’.

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Zambians urged to improve health care

By REBECCA MUSHOTA
GLOBAL Health Corps (GHC) has urged young Zambian professionals to come up with innovative ways to improve health delivery.
GHC chief executive officer and co-founder Barbara Bush said in a statement that the organisation wanted to partner with young Zambian professionals
who could come up with innovative ways to improve health services.
Ms Bush said GHC on Wednesday  this week opened applications for its seventh class of fellows for the 2015-2016 period and was urging young professionals that wanted to make an impact in global health from Zambia, Burundi, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and the United States to apply.
“GHC provides opportunities for young professionals to work on the front lines of the fight for global health equity.
“GHC fellows with qualifications in computer science, health, finance help address urgent global health challenges by working with ministries of health and health organisations,” she said.
GHC offered   a year-long paid fellowship in partnership with internationally renowned organisations in which each fellow is paired with a fellow from the host country to promote cross-cultural knowledge sharing and support.
Ms Bush said health was a human right and the GHC was fighting for health equity.
She said using methods that were often viewed as outside of the traditional health field such as finance and computer science, GHC was helping address health challenges.
Ms Bush said under the programme, fellows were focused on a range of projects including developing electronic medical record systems in Malawi, counseling homeless youths in the United States and strengthening pharmaceutical supply chain systems in Rwanda.
In Zambia, fellows     worked on improving women’s health and service delivery while simultaneously gaining a broader perspective on the complex issues of social justice and equity under the Centre for Infectious Disease Research (CIDRZ).
GHC said youths that were 30-years-old or below and had a university degree should apply.