More foods should be fortified with vitamin D and cheap supplements made easily available to tackle illnesses linked to a lack of it, such as rickets and multiple sclerosis, doctors are urging.
Ministers should instigate a publicity campaign to alert the public to the scale of ill-health caused by consuming too little vitamin D, and NHS staff also need to learn more about the problem, children's doctors say.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says a fourfold increase in the last 15 years in rickets, the bone disease associated more with Victorian times, underlines the need for urgent action.
Too many people are still not getting enough vitamin D, despite moves by the NHS to ensure that vulnerable groups, such as mothers-to-be, young children and the over-65s, do so, said professor Mitch Blair, the college's officer for health promotion.
Intervention is needed because of the paucity of sunlight in Britain and fact that eating foods rich in vitamin D, such as oily fish, eggs and mushrooms, gives someone only 10% of their ideal intake, he said. Vitamin D deficiency, which has also been linked to diabetes and tuberculosis, is expected to affect one in two white Britons, 90% of those in ethnic minority communities, and a quarter of all children.
"The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommends supplements for pregnant or breastfeeding women and their children from six months to four years. The chief medical officer recommends supplements for children up to the age of five and the government's Healthy Start programme provides vitamins free for people on income support," Blair writes in an article on the BBC website. "But we believe more needs to be done."
Low-cost vitamin D supplements should be made widely available and Healthy Start looked at again as too often "vitamins are in short supply and uptake is low", said. The Department of Health denied that supply problems existed.
Professor Dame Sally Davies, England's chief medical officer, and her counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland wrote to NHS staff earlier this year urging them to advise patients who are at risk of deficiency from vitamin D.
NHS organisations must ensure that people who qualify for free Healthy Start supplements get them, Davies said.
Professor Nicholas Clarke, a consultant othopaedic surgeon at Southampton general hospital who highlighted the growing incidence of rickets in 2010, urged food manufacturers to fortify more of their products. "I strongly support the use of supplements and widespread fortification of foods. We have seen progress in this area with Kellogg's adding vitamin D to cereals last year. But not nearly enough food manufacturers have seized the opportunity to make a difference.
"There has been an unnecessary public health delay in the realisation of the gravity of the problem in children, particularly as vitamin D [deficiency] is so easily treated," added Clarke.
