Nutritional deficiencies in the world’s poorest countries impair the growth and development of children, reduce their resistance to infections, and contribute to almost half of all child deaths worldwide. Maternal malnutrition during pregnancy and lactation harms the fetus and infant with both short- and long-term effects on their health.
Against this background the MRC’s Nutrition Programme seeks to gain novel insights into the basic mechanisms linking malnutrition to disease. Our ultimate aim is to provide a stronger theoretical basis for community and clinical nutrition interventions in The Gambia and other deprived populations worldwide.

The Nutrition Programme focuses its research within four thematic areas:

• Nutritional modulation of immunity and infectious diseases
• Combating micronutrient deficiencies in poor populations
• Nutritional Genetics & Environmental Factors in Disease
• Calcium, vitamin D and bone health

The majority of the Nutrition Programme’s work in The Gambia is based at MRC Keneba and focused on the surrounding rural Kiang West region. All ongoing research projects in Keneba are supported by the Kiang West Demographic Surveillance System. We also collaborate on a number of projects with other disease programmes at Fajara.

The MRC Nutrition Programme partners with The Gambia’s National Nutrition Agency (NaNA) on many of their nationwide programmes, especially in relation to treatment of severe malnutrition.

The MRC’s Nutrition Programme in The Gambia is funded through the MRC International Nutrition Group at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Through the International Nutrition Group the Gambian work is closely linked to additional studies in Tanzania, Kenya, Ivory Coast, and Bangladesh all of which address related research topics within the 4 focus areas listed above. Our primary collaborative centre in the UK is MRC Human Nutrition Research in Cambridge, through whom we also run comparative studies in China.