How mandatory common salt iodisation helped bring down thyroid disorders

Despite correction of iodine deficiency, hypothyroidism remains an important public health problem

My grandmother was in her 60s when she developed goitre — an abnormal and visible swelling in the neck caused by an enlarged thyroid gland. It was a result of iodine deficiency in her diet, we were told, and she had to be operated for it. This was in the late 1980s. A high incidence of thyroid-related disorders such as hers, which were linked to iodine deficiency in the population, had earlier in the decade prompted the Congress government at the Centre to make iodisation of common salt compulsory in the country.

In the years to come, this move would