ILOILO CITY – The National Nutrition Council has recently embarked on a heightened campaign to create greater awareness that Goiter and Iodine Deficiency Disorders are serious concerns.

The NNC recently designated January 20-26 as Goiter awareness week but Regional Nutrition Program Coordinator Nona Tad-y said the awareness campaign should continue.

Tad-y said that it is not enough to say that Goiter is “an enlargement of the thyroid gland for lack of seafood in the diet.”

The enlargement of the thyroid gland indicates the lack or decrease in the production of the thyroid-secreting hormone in the blood that happens when iodine in the blood is lowered for a prolonged period of time.

NNC said goiter is just one of the various iodine deficiency disorders (IDD), not necessarily caused by dietary lack of iodine alone but by taking in large quantities of foods with goitrogens, derivatives of cyanide-liberating substances.

These foods include cassava, maize, bamboo shoots, sweet potatoes, lima beans, and vegetables like cabbage, turnips, and mustard.

Other factors that could prevent iodine absorption in the body are bacterial contamination of water that usually happens under unsanitary conditions, or in the use of corroded and damaged pipelines.

NNC also said that goiter and other iodine deficiency disorders are endemic in some landlocked and upland areas where top soil containing iodine are leached out with heavy rains.

The 2012 Revised Nutritional Guidelines for Filipinos (NGF) is urging the use of iodized salt to prevent IDD.

This is based on the 7^th National Nutrition surveys of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), which showed a consistent high prevalence of IDD.

The survey revealed that based on urinary iodine excretion of greater than 50 ug/l, iodine deficiency among the elderly respondents was 2.3 percent, among the lactating respondents, 34.0 percent, and pregnant women, 25.7 percent.

The NNC said that the problem of IDD was dubbed as the “silent emergency” in the early part of 1990, when “hidden hunger” was used to refer to micronutrient malnutrition.

This led to the passage of the ASIN Law in 1996, considered a milestone in addressing iodine malnutrition, after the international community called for salt iodization.

Mrs. Tad-y said that while the law is continually trying to hurdle challenges in implementation, the need to invest in nutrition education, particularly on IDD and goiter, could go a long way in addressing this “silent emergency.”