Provision of micronutrients in coexisting public health programs and risk of excessive intake: regulatory considerations

Countries around the world have been implementing public health interventions to provide vitamins and minerals. There is a concern that the cumulative micronutrient contribution of coexisting programs, when targeting the same population, may exceed their safe levels of intake, thus potentially challenging the primum non nocere principle. We assessed the regulatory framework of such interventions and determined qualitatively whether there were provisions in the regulations that called for coordination among programs to ensure their innocuousness. Country cases from various WHO regions were selected for the study: (1) the Americas: Chile, Costa Rica, and Guatemala; (2) Africa: Malawi, Uganda, and Zambia; (3) South Asia: Bangladesh; and (4) the Western Pacific Region: China and the Philippines. We did not identify any provisions in the existing regulations requiring coordination mechanisms among interventions. However, in some countries, governments have established national micronutrient fortification commissions or alliances aimed to foster interprogram coordination. Their focus, however, has been mostly on the efficacy of the programs and less on their safety. A regulatory framework for coexisting micronutrient interventions should be comprehensive, accounting for all micronutrient sources and including regulatory provisions for coordination among programs.