Reports Study on IDD Elimination Sustainability in Bhutan for establishing the country status conducted in 2010
Anecdotal reports suggested that Iodine Deficiency Disorder was a visually dominant public health problem in Bhutan for a long time until a nationwide study in 1983 statistically confirmed the problem as a national public health issue. To deal with the issue, in 1984, the Ministry of Health of the Royal Government of Bhutan formulated and executed a multisectocal Iodine Deficiency Disorder Control Programme. The activities such as universal salt iodization and distribution, Iodized oil injection, monitoring of iodine content in salt, evaluation of the programme and education at community level were the main components of the control programm
The nationwide IDDCP effectiveness conducted in the late 1991 and early 1992 concluded that the introduction of multisectoral IDDCP brought a drastic improvement in the reduction of the IDD problem in Bhutan.
Multisectoral IDDCP was therefore recognized by RGOB as a very effective tool to tackle and eliminate the IDD issues in the country. In 1996, the Royal Government of Bhutan with the help of specialized team started a cyclic monitoring to track progress towards sustainable elimination of IDD.
In 2003, following the completion of cyclic monitoring, the external team representing WHO, MI,ICCIDD and NSEIDD conducted an evaluation and declared IDD eliminated as a Public Health Problem in Bhutan.
However, IDD elimination is a factor of sustenance and requires constant work on the control measures. Bhutan has achieved its goal of IDD elimination in 2003 the need for a national study to assess the elimination sustenance is justified. This study was therefore designed to look at the outcome of a multisectoral IDDCP and show the current status of elimination sustainability.
The present study shows that a national median urinary iodine excretion is 183 g/L (>=100 g/L indicates adequate intake) indicating no iodine deficiency. The result also showed that 91% of the salt sample had adequate iodine content (>=15ppm is adequate for household salt). The study revealed that Bhutan is sustaining the IDD Elimination achieved in the year 2003.