Xieng Khouang, Laos

Mrs. Mai, age 26, is pregnant with her second child, who is due in April. She lives with her husband, four-year old son and mother in the village of Dindam. The village is in a very mountainous region of Laos about a kilometer from the Vietnam border.

The family diet consists mainly of green leafy vegetables grown in the home garden and rice from the local fields where most of the villagers work. They sometimes buy other vegetables and fruits like apples, oranges, dates, and bananas at the market in Nong Het but only on the rare occasions when they can get transport to and from Nong Het. It is too far to walk. The meat supply for the village is brought by a merchant each week, and because it has to be transported a long distance, it can be quite expensive. When the family can afford it, they purchase pork, beef or fish.

Mrs. Mai is a very happy person and she was a pleasure to talk to. She views the vitamin program as a very positive thing and she is excited by the changes she has seen in her son since he has been taking the vitamins. She says he has much more energy now to play with his friends and that he has a much greater attention span. She said that her son listens a lot more and is able to focus more at school, and as a result he is doing very well. Mrs. Mai says she likes how he is much smarter now. She also reports that her son is much healthier now and doesn’t get sick anywhere near as often as he used to. She said that on the rare occasion that he does get sick, he recovers a lot more quickly and she believes that this can be attributed to the vitamins that he has been taking. Mrs Mai would love for her son to become a teacher so that he can educate children on how to be healthy.

Mrs. Mai told us that she has been taking prenatal vitamins throughout her pregnancy, and told us she has felt very healthy and less tired this time around as opposed to her first pregnancy when she didn’t have access to the prenatal vitamins.

Mrs. Mai asked me a number of questions about vitamins including: How do vitamins work? Where do they come from? Can the vitamins cause long term harm to her children? What is the difference between prenatal vitamins and children’s vitamins? Should she use one type and not the other or can she give the same vitamins to her child that she has been taking? Can prenatal vitamins be harmful to either herself or her child? She was greatly appreciative of all of the answers we were able to supply.

Our thanks to David Evans of Sanofi-Aventis for capturing this story while on an observational trip to Laos with Vitamin Angels.