On 12th March 2015, the practical field implementation began of this project designed to study the effectiveness of educational interventions in nutrition and WASH/malaria in reducing malnutrition, deficiencies in micro-nutrients and anemia. This period corresponded to the field work pilot project that get launched on 19th March 2015 with the objective of testing out logistical procedures, circuits and tools as well as improving the multidisciplinary team made up of 15 specialists (pediatric doctor – not engaged in the field world, nurses, a nutritionist, a biologist, clinical analysis staff, drivers and field technical staff).

This project featured a major component of training for the field technical staff selected from among the local population with six staff chosen from the approximately 300 applicants. In conjunction with the research team, they shall be responsible for carrying out the collection of data, putting into practice the community based intervention and accompanying the selected family households. These working tasks take place in close coordination with the technical staff at the health posts in the neighbourhoods under study and in close cooperation with the local government authorities.

This phase was preceded by a population definition phase characterising the parental practices in the feeding of pre-school age children and running from June to October 2014 and involving some 30 neighbourhoods and 1,400 family households and resulting in the evaluation of a total of 800 children.

During this phase, there was the need to develop and validate a photographic atlas of foodstuffs and thus providing a better quantification of the portions of foodstuffs consumed by the population under study and with these results incorporated into the project now under launch.