International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | March 2018 | Vol 5 | Issue 3 Page 1149 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Raut MK. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2018 Mar;5(3):1149-1156 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Socio-demographic determinants of vitamin A supplementation in Bangladesh: evidence from two rounds of Bangladesh demographic and health surveys, 2007 and 2011 Manoj Kumar Raut* INTRODUCTION Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a major public health problem in many developing countries. Vitamin A deficiency causes xerophthalmia, a range of eye conditions from night blindness to more severe clinical outcomes such as keratomalacia and corneal scars, and permanent blindness. WHO recommends vitamin A supplementation with a dose of 30 mg retinol equivalents in infants aged 6–11 months and 60 mg retinol equivalents at least twice a year in young children aged 12–59 months living in settings where vitamin A ABSTRACT Background: Vitamin A supplementation reduces night blindness, child morbidity and mortality. In Bangladesh, Vitamin A deficiency among children 6-59 months has remained just about stagnant at 20.5 per cent as per the latest Bangladesh National Micronutrient Status Survey 2011-12 declining by a meagre 1.2 per cent from 21.7 per cent in 1997 (IPHN/HKI, 1997). Alarmingly, there is an absolute decline of 24 percentage points in VAS supplementation from 2007 to 2011 according to the Bangladesh Demographic & Health Surveys (BDHS). The current status of vitamin A supplementation raises concern because the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW)’s Health, Population and Nutrition Sector Development Program (HPNSDP) 2011-2016 target of 90 per cent needs to be achieved by 2016. Methods: This paper tries to explore the socio-demographic causes of receipt of Vitamin A in Bangladesh by analysing the data of the demographic and health surveys for 2007 and 2011 using SAS software. A log binomial regression was conducted to explore the effect of education and exposure to mass media on receipt of vitamin A supplementation. Results: After adjusting for related socio-economic and demographic factors, parent’s education and among mass media channels, television seems to play an important role in predicting receipt of Vitamin A, (Prevalence Ratio [PR]: 1.0973, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] 1.0499-1.1469) in BDHS 2011. Similarly, also those who watched television were more likely to have received vitamin A (Prevalence Ratio [PR]: 1.0542, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] 1.0304- 1.0784). Conclusions: It can be concluded that mass media seems to be working well in making the mothers aware about the vitamin A campaign, especially, the exposure to television. Though mother’s education was not associated in the 2007 survey, but it was significantly associated with the receipt of vitamin A in the 2011 survey. Keywords: Communication, Counselling, Education, Mass media, Vitamin A supplementation Regional Manager, Research and Evaluation, Nutrition International, Asia Regional Office, New Delhi, India Received: 10 January 2018 Revised: 03 February 2018 Accepted: 05 February 2018 *Correspondence: Dr. Manoj Kumar Raut, E-mail: rautmanojkumar@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20180775