What are the economic benefits of fortification?

Within Africa alone, it's estimated that micronutrient deficiencies cost the manual labor sectors more than $500 million per year and the lower cognitive performance of school children will eventually cost the African economy $200 million annually.

Over one-third of the world's population is at risk of iodine deficiency which leads to mental retardation, lower IQ, and other cognitive problems. Iodized salt is one of the simplest and least expensive fortification programs and has one of the most immediate impacts on a nation's educational development. Faced with spending enormous sums of money on educational brick and mortar, it makes equal sense to also spend a fraction of that to reverse the mental impairment caused by iodine deficiencies.

Nearly half of all women and about one-third of the world's children suffer from iron deficiency. Over 20% of maternal deaths are due to anemia, school performance is believed to drop by 2.5% with iron deficient anemia, and even mild cases reduce work capacity by 5 to 17%.

500,000 children are struck with preventable childhood blindness due to a lack of adequate sources of vitamin A. And because there is no cure once a child loses their sight, they become a burden on their country's healthcare and economic system for the remainder of their lives. As well, because vitamin A has such a profound affect on the immune system, its deficiency increases the risk of childhood infections by as much as 23 to 40% and increases the risk and recovery time for illnesses such as measles and malaria.

Folic acid, a vitamin B compound, reduces the prevalence of neural tube defects such spina bifida by over 70% and cleft lip and palate by 40% -- both requiring expensive surgical intervention to repair. In developing countries, when a child is born with a severe birth defect the mother is typically removed from the economic system to care for the child, and the father is tasked with providing income for the family while assuming greater responsibilities within the family. As a result, not only is the healthcare system burdened by the medical expenses, but the family's economic structure is also fractured or quite often devastated.

The case for fortification is never stronger than in countries suffering from severe economic challenges or straining under major healthcare issues such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, hunger, or dengue fever. The economic benefit, or payback, for a country is material and immediate as the easily calculable cost of fortification can be assessed against the cost of treating the manifested disease. The annual payback for folic acid fortification alone is in excess of 100:1