LETTER FROM ABROAD

Zaria, Nigeria.—Problems relating to nutrition increasingly occupy the minds of a host of workers in a wide range of disciplines throughout the African world. At the immediate receiving end, so to speak, paediatricians ponder gloomily on the 20% or more of hospital admissions in which severe malnutrition, carrying a high mortality, is the major diagnosis. Hospitals set up nutrition rehabilitation units in which teams battle with problems of health and nutrition education of mothers, and how to introduce new ideas on food hygiene and have them accepted and practiced. Universities and ministries establish food science departments and agricultural centres all over Africa that study land productivity and agricultural and irrigation schemes, often with considerable success at a local level. Yet, in spite of more than two decades of intense and growing activity, it seems that the nutritional status of the child population has not improved and in many areas