Last night watched the East African vet prog where story line was an outbreak of canine distemper in lions treated with Vitamin A. Researched this afternoon as I am interested in vitamins and had not known of this.

Discovered that CD is similar to human measles and found paper postulating use on Vet Forum.

This reminded me of the time when USA milk powder supplies to Africa were being stopped and replaced with European surplus dried milk. The US material was fortified with Vitamin A but as BHA present as antioxidant, not allowed in European material.

Apparently, if unfortified milk powder given to starving baby with measles, could go blind. Thus we were trying to get Vitamin A into the population, using non BHA Vitamin A liquid or powder (stabilised with Vit E).

I formulated a milk powder for Tanzania and explored adding Vit A to tea dust or vegetable oil in Kenya. However, Tea dust was not universally used and the processor of Corn Oil would not consider (even though cost was only about £1/1,000kg).

In Zambia, we provided beta-carotene to Cotton Seed oil producers, and of course, this is metabolised to Vitamin A, so not such a problem.

In the end Vitamin A was added to sugar at the centrifugal stage.

I well remember dispensing lots of Ro-A-Vit when I was apprenticed as well as giving out Chloromycetin syrup to children with measles, so perhaps Vitamin A could be a prophylaxis against associated blindness. Watched 'The Mirror Cracked' recently and the plot here was infection of a pregnant film star. The person who gave her the infection was poisoned.

This is something I would like your views on.
johnep