Effects of vitamin A supplementation on child mortality: evidence from Nepal's 2001 Demographic and Health Survey

Summary Objective To assess the effect of Nepal's vitamin A supplementation programme on child mortality at age 12–59 months. Materials and methods Logistic regression, applied to retrospective data from Nepal's 2001 Demographic and Health Survey. Results After a number of potentially confounding variables are controlled, the effect of 100% community‐level vitamin A coverage since the child's birth, relative to no coverage, is to reduce the odds of dying at age 12–59 months by slightly more than half (OR = 0.47, P = 0.03). Conclusions The estimated beneficial effect of vitamin A supplementation on child mortality is larger than that found in most earlier clinical studies. This larger effect may be due mainly to the other health‐related activities undertaken by the female community health volunteers who distribute vitamin A capsules.