A Community-Designed Play-Yard Intervention to Prevent Microbial Ingestion: A Baby Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Pilot Study in Rural Zambia.

Malnourished children in low-income contexts usually suffer from environmental enteric dysfunction, which is damage to the intestines caused by chronic exposure to bacterial pathogens from feces hypothesized to contribute to stunting. Many intervention studies are piloting "Baby water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH)" to help rural farming families reduce infant and young children's (IYC's) exposure to human and free-range livestock feces. One proposed Baby WASH intervention is a play-yard, which consists of a baby-proofed structure (i.

Characterizing Potential Risks of Fecal-Oral Microbial Transmission for Infants and Young Children in Rural Zambia.

Undernourished children in low-income contexts often suffer from environmental enteric disorder-damage to the intestines probably caused by chronic exposure to bacterial pathogens from feces. We aimed to identify strategies for reducing infants and young children's (IYC) exposure to human and animal feces in rural farming families by conducting direct observation of 30 caregiver-infant dyads for 143 hours and recording water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH)-related behaviors to identify possible pathways of fecal-oral transmission of bacteria among IYC in rural Zambia. In addition to mouthing visibly dirty hands, toys, sibling's body parts, and food, 14 IYC actively ingested 6.