Despite an initiative launched by a noted ophthalmologist, health experts say an estimated 1 million to 3 million children will continue to die annually for lack of doses of the vitamin that would cost about 20 cents a year for each of them. Others will become blind.

All children in the world were supposed to be free of vitamin A deficiency by next year under a plan of action adopted in 1992 by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. The groups recently acknowledged that the goal won’t be met. As a result, the U.S. Agency for International Development has launched a campaign to get Third World producers of foods, such as sugar and flour, to add the essential vitamin to their products.

The vitamin A initiatives are largely due to the work of Alfred Sommer, M.D., who in 1986 reported the results of a survey he had conducted of more than 29,000 children in Sumatra. The ophthalmologist, now dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, received the coveted Albert Lasker Award for clinical medical research in 1997. Some scientists regard him as a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize for medicine.

He also was honored recently by the American Academy of Ophthalmology when he received the International Blindness Prevention Award at the 1998 annual meeting.