Dominican Republic

Project Name: Baseline Survey for Food Fortification Program

Start Date: March 2007

Background

The Dominican Republic requested technical assistance to conduct a national micronutrient survey as a baseline for its national food fortification programs. Existing and planned fortification programs include the following efforts: 

• Existing voluntary fortification of wheat flour with iron, folic acid, and B-complex vitamins and changing the premix to wheat flour for bread to include higher levels of folic acid and a more bioavailable form of iron (ferrous fumarate) in addition to niacin, thiamin, and riboflavin.
• Existing voluntary fortification of maize flour with various vitamins and minerals including vitamin A, vitamin E, folic acid, other B-complex vitamins, and reduced iron. 
• Existing universal salt iodization program. 
• Planned voluntary fortification of sugar with vitamin A.

The CDC assisted the Dominican Republic government and its partners in developing the survey protocol, training survey staff, ensuring appropriate quality controls for collecting all survey and biomarker data, and producing the final survey report.

Purposes

• Assess the prevalence of anemia and the nutritional status of iron, folic acid, vitamin A, and iodine among nonpregnant women 15 to 49 years of age.
• Assess the prevalence of anemia and the nutritional status of iron and vitamin A among young children 6 to 59 months of age.
• Assess the use of iron, folic acid, and calcium supplementation among nonpregnant women 15 to 49 years of age and the use of iron supplementation among children 6 to 59 months of age. 
• Assess the availability, coverage and intake of fortified foods (i.e., salt, wheat flour, bread, maize flour, sugar).

Target Group(s)

The target groups consist of nonpregnant women 15 to 49 years of age and children 6 to 59 months of age.

Progress

Baseline data collection was completed in April 2009.  All biological and epidemiologic analyses are complete and the final report is expected to be released by the Dominican Republic government in early 2011.

Partners

• Ministerio de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social (MISPAS), Dominican Republic
• Centro de Estudios Sociales y Demograficos (CESDEM)
• Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)
• UNICEF
• World Bank

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