Figure 1. Materials and sample analysis at study site. Milk samples from cattle, sheep and goats were collected from the pooled morning milk of household herds into sterile laboratory tubes. Human milk was collected from volunteer lactating mothers of children from 2 to 22 months of age, by self extraction into sterile laboratory tubes. Vitamin A Assessment Two portable iCheckTM devices (BioAnalyt GmbH, Teltow, Germany) were used to measure retinol and b-carotene in blood and milk (Fig. 1). The iCheckTM Ret 435-1 was used for retinol assessment and the iCheckTM Ret 515-2 for b-carotene. Although rapid methods generally use capillary blood samples (Craft 2001), in this study venous blood was used, as originally developed for veterinary medicine, because of the larger volume of blood required for vitamin A, malaria and haemoglobin (Hb) testing, which included dried blood on ﬁlter paper for iron assessment. A syringe was used for venous blood sampling from children. The same method was used for both devices, with 400 lL blood (or 600 lL of milk) injected into the extraction unit. The contents were shaken for 10 s until the blood changed from reddish to reddish brown. The unit rested for 1 min until separation was complete. The con- tents of the extraction unit were transferred to the iCheck device, and the value was displayed on the LCD screen. For retinol measurements, the optic unit was enclosed by a black box to prevent inﬁltration of external light. The same cut-off values were used for blood and serum. Retinol Retinol Assessment 115 status was considered deﬁcient when concentrations were <0.70 lmol/L, moderately deﬁcient when concentrations were between 0.70 and 0.35 lmol/L and severely deﬁcient for concentrations <0.35 lmol/L. For milk, the retinol activity equivalent (RAE) was calculated as RAE = reti- nol + 0.167 * b-carotene (FAO and WHO 2001; West and Eilander 2001). The conversion rate of b-carotene from milk is not well known but is likely higher than 6 g because milk has properties of an oil in water emulsion which favours the absorption of b-carotene, compared the vege- tables (R. Hurrell, personal communication). Anaemia and Intestinal Parasite Status Hb concentration was measured with the HemoCue Hb301TM photometer (Angelholm, Sweden) after daily calibration with reference blood (130 mg/L ± 1.2). Anae- mia was deﬁned as Hb < 120 mg/L for non-pregnant women and <110 mg/L for pregnant women and children under ﬁve. Single individual faecal samples were scanned using the Kato-Katz direct observation method for detec- tion of intestinal parasites (Lamy 1980; Golvan and Am- broise-Thomas 1984). Analyses were performed in a mobile laboratory. Emaciation Anthropometric measurements were made using a UNI- CEF-provided tape board for height and an electronic scale for weight. For children, a Z-score was calculated Observed value reference value Z-score ¼ Standard deviation of the reference population Observed values for children were compared with the WHO 2006 growth standards. For women, the body mass index (BMI) was calculated. A Z-score weight-for-height index <-2 indicated global acute malnutrition for chil- dren and BMI < 18.5 kg/m2 indicated malnourishment for women (Bruce 2003). Statistical Analysis Data were double entered into a database (Access 2003 , Microsoft, Redmond WA), compared with Epi-InfoTM (version 3.5.1, CDC, Atlanta, GA) and statistically analysed (Intercooled Stata 10, College Station, TX). Different groups were compared by the analysis of variance (ANOVA) for continuous normally distributed variables and by