Promoting hygienic weaning food handling practices through a community based programme: intervention implementation and baseline characteristics for a cluster randomised controlled trial in rural Gambia

This study, published in BMJ Open by Manjang et al. (2018), describes a clustered randomised control trial of an intervention intended to improve levels of contamination of weaning foods in rural Gambia. Such contamination is a cause of diarrhoea in children under 5 years, but public health interventions to combat this are rare in low-income and middle-income countries. For this work, lessons were taken from previous SHARE funded work carried out by Omprasad Gautam in Nepal; which involved the implementation of a community-based weaning food hygiene programme. The paper describes the design and implementation of an adapted programme; which successfully involved and engaged all levels of community in the study villages.