Nutritional training in a humanitarian context: Evidence from a cluster randomized trial.

Behavioural change communication interventions have been shown to be effective at improving infant and young child nutrition knowledge and practices. However, evidence in humanitarian response contexts is scarce. Using data on secondary outcomes of breastfeeding, water treatment, and knowledge from a cluster randomized control trial of the Yemen Cash for Nutrition programme's impact on child nutritional status, this paper shows that the programme significantly improved knowledge and practices for poor women with young children in the pilot districts. The intervention consisted of cash transfers and monthly group nutrition education sessions led by locally recruited community health volunteers. Data are based on self-reports by participants. Estimating impacts among all 1,945 women in 190 clusters randomly assigned to treatment versus control and controlling for baseline levels and community characteristic and adjusting for noncompliance with randomization, the programme increased the probability of breastfeeding initiation within the first hour after delivery by 15.6% points (p < .05; control = 74.4% and treatment = 83.6%), the probability of exclusive breastfeeding during the first 6 months by 14.4% points (control = 13.5% and treatment = 25.3%), the probability of households treating water consumed by adults by 16.7% points (p < .01; control = 13.9% and treatment = 23.4%), and treating water consumed by children under two by 10.3% points (p < .10; control = 31.2% and treatment = 37.9%). Impacts on knowledge and breastfeeding are similar for both literate and illiterate women, and water treatment impacts are significantly larger for literate women. This study was registered at 3ie (RIDIE-STUDY-ID-5b4eff881b29a) and funded by the Nordic Trust Fund and Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research programme on Policies, Institutions, and Markets.

Stability-Indicating Chromatographic Methods for the Investigation of Ritodrine Hydrochloride Stability and Characterization of the Oxidative Degradation Product.

Two simple and sensitive chromatographic methods were developed and validated for quantitative determination of ritodrine hydrochloride in presence of its oxidative degradation product. The first method depends on densitomeric determination of thin-layer chromatograms of the intact drug in presence of its oxidative degradate. Excellent separation was achieved at 220 nm using a mobile phase of dichloromethane-methanol-glacial acetic acid (15 : 5 : 0.25, v/v/v). The second was an HPLC method, in which efficient separation was carried out on C18 column (150 × 4.6 × 5 µm) using a mobile phase consisting of water: acetonitrile (70,30, v/v) at a flow rate of 1 mL min-1 and UV detection at 220 nm. Beer's law was obeyed in the range of 0.025-0.3 µg/spot and 5-40 µg mL-1 of the intact drug using the two methods, respectively. The proposed methods were validated according to International Conference on Harmonization guidelines and successfully applied for the determination of ritodrine hydrochloride in bulk powder, laboratory prepared mixtures and pharmaceutical dosage form with good accuracy and precision. The results obtained were compared with those of the reported method and were found to be in good agreement.