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Vitamin-A deficiency has recently been shown to have an impact on morbidity and mortality [1,2,3]. The extent of eye lesions has been the method commonly used to assess the severity of vitamin-A deficiency [4,5]. While this method has a very good correlation with serum vitamin-A status and has been widely used in field studies, it requires specialized and well-trained personnel [6,7]. Also, there is the need to examine large groups of at-risk individuals to find evidence of the deficiency. While the clinical examination provides very good information in warm, tropical climates, where the eye lesions detected can generally be assumed to be due to vitamin-A deficiency, in other types of environment, such as a medium or high altitude, or dry and dusty places, corneal reactions to the environment may be difficult to separate from early-stage vitamin-A-deficiency lesions.Biochemical assessment of vitamin A is a more accurate way of documenting the vitamin-A status of the individual. However, its use at the community level is limited by the difficulties of drawing blood samples from large groups of individuals due to economic, logistical, and ethical considerations. As an alternative, a dietary task group of the IVACG has proposed the use of a dietary questionnaire applied at the home level by auxiliary health personnel with minimum training as a simplified method to evaluate vitamin-A-deficiency risk [8].

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