Extrait

Background and study aims Concern Worldwide (also see http://www.actionagainsthunger.org /) has been implementing unconditional cash transfers (UCT) as part of their humanitarian intervention during the lean season for some years. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of two different UCT interventions on child under nutrition. Who can participate? Households defined as the most vulnerable by Concern Worldwide and targeted to receive cash transfers, with women aged 15-49 years and children aged 6-59 months. A small sample of non-recipients will also be investigated. What does the study involve? Households around about 20 distributions points will be randomly allocated to one of two groups. One group will receive a standard seasonal UCT intervention that provides sufficient cash to households to cover 75% of the household food needs over the four-month period of the lean season (June – September). The other group will receive an earlier seasonal UCT intervention that provides the same total amount of cash but distributed over a longer period of six months, starting two months earlier (April – September). Between June and September, both groups will also receive a supplementary feeding intervention for children aged 6 to <24 months and pregnant and lactating women, and health, hygiene and nutrition education messages. What are the possible benefits and risks of participating? The population in Tahoua, as a whole, should benefit from the future improvement in the design of cash transfer programmes. Individual participants will get their haemoglobin results and will be referred to health facilities if identified as anaemic using local diagnostic cut-offs. They will also be referred to a therapeutic feeding programme if found to be severely malnourished according to anthropometric criteria. Participants will be asked to allocate time to answering the study questionnaires and no material incentives or rewards will be provided. A finger stick blood sample will be collected which may cause some minor discomfort. Where is the study run from? Tahoua region, Niger When is the study starting and how long is it expected to run for? June 2014 to December 2015 Who is funding the study? Department for International Development (DFID), UK Who is the main contact? Dr Andrew Seal

Critère d'inclusion

• Child undernutrition

Liens

• ictrp
• isrctn