VitANet

The Case for Integrating Vitamin A Capsule and Insecticide Treated Nets Distribution Programs

At the time this project was started the distribution of VACs (Vitamin A Capsules) and Insecticide treated bednets (ITNs) were demonstrated to be effective as stand alone interventions, each reducing young child mortality by around 25%.

Objectives

The objective of this project was to determine whether VAC and ITN programs could be effectively integrated to improve the cost-effectiveness of both interventions.

Results

There are a number of potential synergies of integrating VACs and ITNs:

• Biological: vitamin A deficient (VAD) children are more susceptible to malaria
• Epidemiological: Many malarious areas also have high levels of VAD
• Programmatic: The level of infrastructure and human resources required for both types of interventions are similar
• Cost-effectiveness: It is expected that an integrated program could be run more cost-effectively than two independent programs.

Recommendations

Given these results, PATH Canada (now HealthBridge) searched unsuccessfully for supporting funds to execute VitANet. The time for VitANet has now probably passed, and it is time now to move on to other more broadly integrative interventions.

The report is available here.