Suffer the

Marshall Islands

children

Testing on Marshall Island children has revealed serious deficiencies in their lev els of Vitamin A. Not one of the 600 Marshall Islands children tested have nor mal levels of Vitamin A, and imported Western food is being blamed.

Public Health director Kennar Briand says the World Health Organisation con siders it an epidemic when 1.5 percent of the population has moderate to severe Vitamin A deficiency. The Marshall Islands has 60 percent.

Health secretary Donald Capelle says food from the Marshall Islands is packed with nutritional value but many imported foods have little or no value. He says children are eating cheeseballs, instead of pandanus and drinking cola instead of coconut milk.

Vitamin A deficiency is linked to night blindness, anaemia, measles, diarrohea and pneumonia.

The latest discovery on the health of Marshallese children compounds further the already held belief that many suffer from radiation fall out from American tests on Bikini island.

PIM carried a story in its April, 1994, issue of how the US used the islanders as guinea pigs to test the impact of radiation

on people.

Scientifically, radiation is able to carry itself through genes from parents to chil dren.

This in itself is causing anxiety in the Marshallese people about the health problems of their children.