It was about a quarter century ago that ICCIDD was founded to lead a re-orientation of public health response to the broad problem of iodine malnutrition. The challenge: to re-educate people that the real threat is impaired mental development, not the aethetics of visible goiter. Progress has been made. This story of a remote Indian village from the New Indian Express "gets it," saying IDD is " the single-largest preventable cause of mental retardation in the world." That's the message!

The article gives results of a study conducted by the Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC) which found nearly one-quarter of the population has goiter (23.6%) and "close to 90 per cent of surveyed salt samples had inadequate iodine content. Barely 9.9 per cent had the recommended level. While more SC population used salt with iodine, the figure dipped in case of STs.

"A major reason behind iodine deficiency in certain geographical regions is soil which explains why water in coastal areas has more iodine content than hilly and rocky terrains.

"Since urinary iodine is considered the best indicator of intake and not prone to errors, RMRC study focussed on it. A whopping 52 per cent of the children were found with less than 100 microgram iodine in their urine. Only 10 per cent of households consumed iodised salt, with adequate content, obtained from public and commercial sources far below the goal of 90 per cent coverage. The reason for use of non-iodised salt was poor availability and absence of quality standardisation besides ineffective programme monitoring."