Under the ICMR/AU - STRC Health Practitioners/Researchers Capacity Building Scheme, a Call for Applications was announced (in June, 2019) for training of African researchers through seven courses to be conducted by the ICMR Institutes in India in the year 2019.

The seventh course on ‘Training Course on Assessment of Nutritional Anaemias’ has been organized at ICMR- National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad during 9-20 December, 2019 and attended by 5 African researchers from Cote d’ivoire, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Nigeria and Ethiopia .

Nutritional anaemia, caused by a lack of iron, protein, B12, and other vitamins and minerals, is the most common nutritional disorder of public health concern. This two-week training course on ‘Nutritional Anaemia’ is a part of ICMR’s building capacity programmes for the medical personnel and researchers in assessing the nutritional anaemia among populations. The training programme encompasses lectures on biochemistry, physiology and pathology of iron metabolism, public health aspects of iron nutrition and methodological aspects primarily focussed on imparting a strong theoretical foundation. This is followed by a hands-on-training of each participant with blood collection, transportation methods in field conditions and laboratory analysis of haemoglobin using both manual and automated haematology analyzer based methods. Further, the participants are also trained in laboratory analysis of serum ferritin, transferrin receptor, C-reactive protein and B-vitamins using ELISA, RIA and HPLC methods. It is expected that the participants at the end of the training will be able to design and execute assessment of nutritional anaemia in public health settings.