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Vitamin Angels addresses the issue of global malnutrition amongst children with our Children’s Nutrition Program. This program is specifically designed to alleviate the problem by addressing the crisis at hand, putting our attention on shorter routes to better nutrition, and supplying our children with enough multivitamins for one year.

Nutrition is a foundation for the health and development of children; and the interaction of infection and malnutrition is well-documented. Improved nutrition means stronger immune systems, less illness and better health. Healthy children simply learn better. They are stronger, more productive and into their adult lives are more able to create opportunities to gradually break the cycles of both poverty and hunger in a sustainable way. Better nutrition is a prime entry point to ending poverty and a milestone to achieving an overall better quality of life.

Since malnourishment and poverty often go hand in hand, hunger and malnutrition cause tremendous human suffering, killing millions of children every year and costing developing countries billions of dollars through lost productivity.

Each year, more than 10 million children die before their fifth birthday, the vast majority from causes preventable through a combination of good care, nutrition, and a simple medical treatment. Child mortality is thus closely linked to poverty, with child malnutrition implicated in more than half the deaths worldwide. It weakens children and reduces their resistance to disease. It often begins at birth, when poorly nourished mothers give birth to underweight babies. Improper feeding and child care practices also contribute to worsen malnutrition.

The World Bank. Atlas of Global Development. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006.

• Honduras
• Dominica Republic
• Tibet
• Nandi Hills Project

Our Honduras Children’s Multivitamin Campaign is reaching 55,000 children per year in a three year pilot program sponsored by Sight & Life (DSM), UNFI, Anabolic Laboratories, United Flavors, Domino Foods, George Washington University, Pan American Health Organization and Medpharm. Our in-country partners are Cristo Salva, The Ministry of Health and PAHO. We are distributing children’s multivitamins and antiparastics (the multivitamins are given daily and the antiparastics are given twice a year).

The Dominican Republic Children’s Multivitamin Program is a three year pilot program bringing daily multiple vitamins, along with twice a year deworming medicine, to 50,000 children living in absolute poverty. The Bateys are the impoverished communities that at one time were attached to the sugar plantations in Dominican Republic. After the sugar industry was replaced by tourism, the people on the Bateys were left without anything. The Dominican Republic Children’s Multivitamin Program has been made possible through the sole financial support of United Natural Foods, Inc, (UNFI). Our generous partners, Pharmachem Laboratories and Tishcon have supplied all of the children’s multivitamins for this program.

Dr. Nancy Harris has been working in Tibet for the past fifteen years. Her nutritional surveys of the country have documented chronic malnutrition of children throughout the country. Rickets (softening of the bones) is a major problem caused by lack of vitamin D and calcium. Vitamin Angels originally went into Tibet and started a vitamin D and calcium program to prevent Rickets. After a short while we realized that the children were deficient in all of the micronutrients and so we switched to a multivitamin regime. Our donations in Tibet have reached a high of 2 million children’s multiples per month. These donations have been made possible through the generous support of our partners Pharmachem and Tishcon.

This project is a collaboration of four organizations: Us Foundation, Airline Ambassadors International, Humanity in Unity and Vitamin Angels.  The mission is to provide anti-parasitic medicine and vitamins for 25,000 children to avert disease and death caused by chronic malnutrition. With little access to clean water and no organized sewage system in the Nandi Hills rural area; the probability of the children being infected with parasites is almost 100%. With the antiparasitics and vitamins the children have the chance to grow up to be healthy.

“The distribution of the anti-parasitic medicine began. The volunteers sat in a row to dispense to the children who filed by. We made sure that they chewed and swallowed the citrus flavored tablet before we thanked them and sent them on. Two doctors worked with their teachers to get the children’s health history to track their health progress. The line moved quickly, heartwarming and heartbreaking memories burned into my heart as I handed out the medicine. The children wore their threadbare school uniforms or the best clothes they could afford for the occasion. Their hair, neatly combed for the boys, and braided with ribbons or flowers for the girls. Big brown eyes took up most of the thin sweet faces, watchful and shyly smiling or sober past their age. We are honored to be making such a difference in these children’s lives.”
– Marilyn Tam, Us Foundation