Hundreds of birth defects ‘due to lack of folic acid’

MORE than 2,000 babies have died or been born disabled because of ministers’ refusal to adopt nutritional advice on folic acid, experts claim.

Scientists have repeatedly advised the Government to ensure food firms add folic acid to flour, a measure they say reduces the risk of babies being born with major defects such as spina bifida.

However ministers have stalled on implementing the guidance – and researchers now say serious problems in some 2,014 pregnancies over 14 years could have been avoided if they had.

Experts from six universities – including Oxford – along with Public Health England and Public Health Wales, believe there would have been around a 21 per cent drop in cases of serious defects in pregnancy if the UK

‘Significant consequences’

had made fortifying flour mandatory in 1998, the same as the US.

Official figures show that 85 per cent of British women aged 16 to 49 have low folic acid levels. The B vitamin has several important functions, including the formation of red blood cells.

Writing in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, the authors said: ‘In the USA, following the introduction of mandatory fortification of flour, there was an approximate 23 per cent reduction in affected births.

‘The failure of Britain to fortify flour with folic acid has had significant consequences.’

Experts on the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition wrote to ministers in October expressing concern that folic acid proposals made in 2000, 2006 and 2009 had not been adopted.

A Department of Health spokesman said the recommendations put forward in October are ‘currently being considered’.