Welcome to your Reading Comprehension Passage II

1. It's been almost 20 years since Canadian pediatrician Dr. Stanley Zlotkin was approached by UNICEF with a daunting challenge: Could he come up with an inexpensive means of providing iron and other micronutrients to millions of children around the world to prevent anemia?

2. Anemia due to iron deficiency impairs babies' physical and neurological development, weakens immunity that makes them more prone to infections such as pneumonia and, in severe cases, can cause death. In developing countries, parents make food for their babies from locally available commodities such as rice, maize, or wheat, none of which contain sufficient iron. While iron drops were available, their strong metallic taste meant most children wouldn't take them, and the mineral turns teeth brown. That wasn't something Canadian kids had to deal with because baby foods such as infant cereal have long been fortified with iron – and anemia is rare.

3. Zlotkin's solution was Sprinkles, a sachet of micronutrients in powdered form that could easily be added to a baby's or toddler's meals, much like shaking a packet of sugar into a cup of coffee. UNICEF liked the idea but said he had to show the product would prevent and treat anemia, demonstrate that parents would use it, find suppliers to make the product in huge volumes at a very inexpensive price and come up with workable distribution models. That research showed that most children who had anemia and took the micronutrient powder became non-anemic. In focus groups around the world, parents said giving Sprinkles to their children wasn't difficult because an edible coating on the iron component masked its nasty taste.

4. Once the team began doing large-scale research projects in countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, they were able to contract several local companies to mass-produce Sprinkles at a cost of two to three cents per packet. With all its concerns met, UNICEF officially embraced the product and began global distribution of Sprinkles, which began with five or six essential minerals and vitamins to address anemia and then expanded to 17 micronutrients to further support children's physical and neurological development threatened by malnutrition.

5. Zlotkin, who gave the Sprinkles patent to the public domain several years ago and has never personally profited from it, has been tweaking the formulation, adding five other micronutrients aimed at promoting development in low-birth-weight babies to prevent stunted growth and other health effects.