Micronutrients
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Even in its brevity this talk simplified an extremely difficult topic. A former colleague of mine, Jane Kvalsvig, was involved in a project investigating means of providing children with iron in Kenya. The project was stopped with it was discovered that children getting the iron supplements were more likely to get malaria. Mosquitoes prefer iron rich blood. Simplistic solutions do not work!
I found this, from the Cochrane Library: http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/userfiles/ccoch/file/CD006589.pdf
As you suggest, it sounds like they recommend adding anti-malarials. The bottom line was, "Iron does not increase the risk of clinical malaria or death, when regular malaria surveillance and treatment services are provided. There is no need to screen for anaemia prior to iron supplementation."
I'm wondering if this might ignore composition effects: maybe on the individual level iron-rich blood will hurt a person's chances of getting malaria, but on the societal level, it doesn't.
Hi Alexander, do you know if a study was done on this? If yes, I would love to read it. Stopping the whole project does not make sense to me, because well I would just stopped giving the iron supplement and maybe combined some anti-malarial measures. I agree nothing is ever as simple as it may seem. Thanks for the input, I am very interrested in learning more.