End Fatigue

The Vitamin Angel

By: Amy Summers

Originally printed in NoNiche™!
Published by Sensitive Pie Productions, a division of Tribeca Nine, Inc.

Howard Schiffer is on a crusade to eradicate childhood blindness and needs more wings.

For many an angel is a spiritual being... a figment with a glowing halo dressed in all white watching over us. But, for scores of children around the world an angel is a real man, wearing jeans. His name is Howard Schiffer and to children worldwide, he is their "Vitamin Angel."

Schiffer spent two decades developing and selling products including Dr. Atkins Diet Shake, Susan Powter's Take Five multiple and Balance Bars. While Schiffer found his fast-track career profitable, he also felt it to be very empty and lacking purpose.

But then a tragedy in 1994, the Northridge earthquake, hit close to Schiffer's hometown of Santa Barbara. In the wake of the earthquake, Schiffer rallied his colleagues in the industry and responded by delivering shipments of vitamins to those affected.

Following the quake, Schiffer made the decision that after 20 years of creating and marketing natural products for those who could afford to buy them, he wanted to shift his energy to provide vital nutrition to people in need. With that, in 1994 Schiffer founded Vitamin Angels, a non-profit dedicated to providing vital nutrition to children and families in need worldwide.

After several trips to India, Bali, the Dominican Republic and Indonesia, Schiffer started noticing that childhood blindness and associated mortality caused by a lack of vitamin A was rampant.

"Vitamin A deficiency affects anywhere between 100 and 140 million children annually... and of those children, up to half a million of them will go blind," says Schiffer.

"The true tragedy is that half of those children who go blind will die in 12 months from opportunistic infections and associated diseases."

Armed with that knowledge Schiffer manifested his passion into an aggressive worldwide campaign to eradicate childhood blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency (VAD) by the year 2020.

Schiffer aptly named his global initiative Operation 20/20, which will alleviate VAD by providing high-dose vitamin A to children ages 1 to 4 and lactating mothers. In addition an accompanying chewable tablet to treat parasitic worms to improve the absorption of vitamin A and other nutrients will be provided.

The one-time cost to prevent a single child from going blind due to VAD is $1. This covers the cost of two high-dose vitamin A capsules, the anti-parasitic, all transportation, shipping, administration, as well as the education program for a child when they are most vulnerable to VAD.

"It's a low-cost, low-tech solution to a major global health problem that is easily within our reach," says Schiffer.