Vitamin Sherpa

RAM SHRESTHA

Saving the lives of sickly children doesn't take much: a little money, some medicine, the right food. In Nepal, they've discovered one more factor: the power of the grandmother. It was Ram Shrestha, chemist and health expert, who figured out how to unleash it.

The poverty in Nepal and the toll it exacts on its smallest citizens are staggering. Twenty years ago, the infant-mortality rate was 133 for every 1,000 births, most of the babies claimed by pneumonia and diarrhea. By the 1980s, it was clear that a lack of vitamin A in the Nepalese diet was a factor in the...

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