Experts want national program to combat low rates of iodine supplementation in young women

Australian experts are calling for a national public health education and supplementation program to address the low rate of iodine consumption in women of child bearing age, saying unborn babies are being put at risk through ignorance and lack of information.  In an editorial published in the Medical Journal of Australia this week endocrinologist Professor Creswell J. Eastman, from Westmead Hospital and diteitian Associate Professor Karen Charlton, PhD,from Wollongong University, stress that it is “indefensible that women of reproductive age, and especially pregnant women, are not being adequately informed about the need for iodine supplementation to prevent irreversible neurodevelopmental effects in their children”.