(ODDITY CENTRAL) – An international team of scientists has reportedly created a genetically-modified ‘superbanana’ that contains significantly more nutrients, especially vitamin A.
Vitamin A deficiency has been plaguing poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia for hundreds of years, inhibiting children’s growth, causing blindness and significantly weakening their resistance to deadly treatable diseases such as diarrhea and measles. The World Health Organization estimates that 190 million preschool-aged children worldwide are deficient in vitamin A and that malnutrition accounts for 6% of early childhood deaths in Africa alone. Luckily, a cheap and viable solution to malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency, in particular, may be available in the very near future.
Uganda is one of several African countries battling malnutrition, but it could also be the source of the cure to this plague. A team of researchers from the African country’s National Agricultural Research Laboratories, in collaboration with Australian agricultural scientist James Dale and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has reportedly created a genetically-modified banana that contains all the necessary nutrients to combat malnutrition.
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