Livestock programming for nutritional improvements in children under five years of age and pregnant and lactating mothers

The Livestock for Health (L4H) project is a collaborative effort between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Marsabit County Government, the National Government of Kenya, the National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) and Washington State University (WSU). The project was made possible through the support provided by the Office of Technical and Program Quality, Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to determine the cost-effectiveness of livestock feeding interventions and nutritional counselling in reducing the risk of malnutrition among children and women in pastoral communities during the critical dry periods. The project was designed as a cluster randomized control trial with two intervention arms and one control group. Households in Intervention Arm 1 receive livestock feeds sufficient to maintain two tropical livestock units (TLUs) for 90 days during critical dry periods or drought and 7–14 days into the rain season. Households in Intervention Arm 2 receive similar livestock feeds and regular nutritional counselling carried out by trained community healthcare workers. Households in Arm 3 are the control group and do not receive any of the two interventions during the study period. The results from this baseline survey will be essential for comparing with other data which will be collected during the routine household data collection visits (six week follow-up and quarterly household visits) for monitoring trends in household milk yield, milk consumption (amount and frequency) and nutritional status across the intervention and control arms of the study over the study period. At baseline, both the intervention and control arms were comparable in household demographics, socio-economic characteristics, household livestock ownership, milk production and consumption, and maternal and child nutritional status and health. Additionally, the high prevalence of malnutrition in this study population and the data on health and intervention costs which will be collected in this study will allow for a cost-effectiveness analysis to determine if livestock feeding interventions and nutritional counselling are cost-effective in reducing the risk of malnutrition among children and women in pastoral communities during the critical dry periods.

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	FAO, UNICEF, Washington State University
Format:	Book (stand-alone) biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	FAO ; UNICEF ; 2022
Online Access:	https://openknowledge.fao.org/handle/20.500.14283/CB8625EN http://www.fao.org/3/cb8625en/cb8625en.pdf
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