MORE than a hundred children across the Bradford district received hospital treatment for rickets or some other form of vitamin D deficiency in the year up to the end of March, new figures have revealed.

In 2009/10, the number of children diagnosed with the condition in Bradford hospitals stood at only 17, but this had increased to 105 by 2013/14, a rise of more than 500 per cent.

The new figure is the joint seventh highest across the UK, which saw an average of 31 hospital admissions per local authority for children aged up to 16.

Across Yorkshire and the Humber, the figure has risen from 103 to 449 over the past five years, in line with a UK rise from 1,396 in 2009/10 to 4,712 in 2013/14.

Shirley Brierley, consultant in Public Health for Bradford Council, said the authority would be "looking more closely" at the data.

"We recognise that vitamin D deficiency is a common problem in the Bradford district and we have a range of interventions in place to reduce the risks, especially for pregnant women and children," she said.

“We have advice leaflets and ongoing awareness events for families, and there are also trained ‘vitamin D champions’ spreading the word among local communities.

“All pregnant women, babies up to six months, and children up to two years who are at risk are offered free Healthy Start vitamins, which include vitamin D."

The new data has been collated by the Vitamin D Mission, a new public health awareness campaign which aims to eradicate vitamin D deficiency in the UK's under-fives.

As part of the campaign, designed to complement National Vitamin D Awareness Week, which runs until Sunday, the Mission has developed an online test which allows parents to estimate how much vitamin D their child is getting.

As part of the research, it also commissioned a survey among parents across Yorkshire and the Humber, which found that 91 per cent of them were unaware of Department of Health guidelines stating that all infants and young children aged six months to five years should take a daily supplement of vitamin D.

Nearly 30 per cent of parents admitted to knowing ‘not much’ or ‘nothing’ about the role of vitamin D in their child’s health, and only 28 per cent were aware of the months that the skin can make vitamin D from sunlight, said to be March to September.

Dr Benjamin Jacobs, clinical consultant to the Vitamin D Mission, said: “These findings are very worrying as they seem to suggest that parents in the UK are still not properly informed of the major health issues associated with low levels of vitamin D."

In 2006, a rise in the number of cases of children with rickets, a bone-softening disease common in Victorian times, prompted Bradford City Teaching Primary Care Trust to spend £50,000 on a scheme to provide free vitamin D drops to every child under the age of two living in inner-city Bradford, the first project of its kind in the UK.