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Background: Livestock-dependent communities in Africa's drylands disproportionately experience acute malnutrition, especially during drought seasons. We detail the design and implementation of the Livestock for Health (L4H) study aimed at determining the effect of providing livestock feed and nutritional counselling to prevent seasonal spikes of acute malnutrition., Methods: The L4H study employed a 3-arm cluster randomized controlled trial to compare households in pastoralist settings in northern Kenya receiving livestock feeds during critical dry periods, with or without nutritional counseling, with control households. Over 4 dry seasons, 2019 to 2021, the study collected data on household milk production, consumption patterns, mothers'/children's nutritional status, household socioeconomic status, herd dynamics, and human and animal health status every 6 weeks., Results: L4H recruited 1734 households, with 639, 585, and 510 households assigned to intervention arms 1 and 2 and control arm 3, respectively. From these households, 1734 women and 1748 children younger than 3 years were recruited. In total, 19 419 household visits were completed, obtaining anthropometric measures 9 times on average for each child and mother. Eighty-one households (5%) were lost from the study due to the mother's death, child's death, migration, and withdrawal for other reasons., Discussion: L4H's success in a challenging environment was possible due to strong community engagement, formative studies to inform trial design, collaboration with local authorities, and effective interdisciplinary collaboration. Subsequent manuscripts will report the study findings., Trial Registration: The study was registered October 29, 2020, and is online at ClinicalTrials.gov (ID: NCT04608656)., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Global food security is threatened by the effects of COVID-19 on international agricultural supply chains and locusts destroying crops and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa and South Asia. We quantify the possible impacts on global supplies and prices of wheat, rice and maize. We show that local production declines have moderate impacts on global prices and supply-but trade restrictions and precautionary purchases by a few key actors could create global food price spikes and severe local food shortages., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Objective: To assess the association between the prevalence of tongue cyst-positive and antigen-positive pigs across different settings in Africa, to evaluate whether examining pigs for cysts could be used as a rapid surveillance tool for identifying geographical areas with a higher probability of high transmission of cysticercosis., Methods: Published data were collated from 26 study sites across Africa that reported the prevalence of porcine cysticercosis by both lingual and serological examinations. The study sites were located in 10 countries across Africa., Results: Seroprevalence rates ranged from 4% to 41%. Despite the varied study sites, the relationship between the two variables was highly consistent and suggests identification of tongue cysts may be useful for cysticercosis surveillance. We found that all areas with more than 10% of pigs having cysts in their tongues had at least 30% seroprevalence (PPV of 100%), although this cut-off is less reliable at predicting that an area is of low transmission (NPV of 84%)., Conclusion: Assessing the prevalence of tongue cyst-positive pigs is a potential rapid epidemiological tool for identifying areas at high risk of cysticercosis, although further refinement and validation is required using standardised data sets., (© 2016 The Authors. Tropical Medicine & International Health Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Objective: To examine trends in equity in contraceptive use, and in contraceptive-prevalence rates in six East African countries., Methods: In this repeated cross-sectional study, Demographic and Health Surveys Program data from women aged 15-49 years in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda between 2000 and 2010 were analyzed. Individuals were ranked according to wealth quintile, stratified urban/rural populations, and calculated concentration index-a statistic integrating information from all wealth quintiles to analyze disparities., Results: Equity and contraceptive-prevalence rates increased in most country regions over the study period. Notably, in rural Rwanda, contraceptive-prevalence rates increased from 3.9 to 44.0, and urban Kenya became the most equitable country region, with a concentration index of 0.02. The Pearson correlation coefficient between improvements in concentration index and contraceptive-prevalence rates was 0.52 (P=0.011)., Conclusion: The results indicate that countries seeking to increase contraceptive use should prioritize equity in access to services and contraceptives., (Copyright © 2015 International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)