Goitre afflicts Indian woman - iodine deficiency and the thyroid gland, in Uttarakhand

From the archive record

A rural woman from Garhwal district in Uttarakhand, India, talks about her daily chores, hardships of life and her family, without referring to the more obvious feature of the goitre that has affected her throat. She suffers from goitre - a swelling of the neck resulting from enlargement of the thyroid gland due to deficiency in iodine intake. Subsequent to the 1980's widespread goitre epidemic in India, commercial salts started to be sold with iodine introduced in them. The term “goitre” simply refers to the abnormal enlargement of the thyroid gland. The thyroid gland is a small butterfly-shaped gland in the neck, just in front of the windpipe (trachea). It produces thyroid hormones, which helps to regulate the body's metabolism (the process that turns food into energy). A swelling of thy