I spent the past couple days at the Global Health Confernce in Montreal. It was bigger and better than its predecessor, CCIH, with some of the bigger guns in Global Health presenting. But for me the most interesting part was a presentation by a PhD student at the University of Guelph. He reported on a field trial he ran in Cambodia in which small fish-shaped cast iron ingots were distributed to households with promotional messages to place the ingots in cooking pots during cooking. The ingots leached sufficient quantities of iron to reduce the levels of childhood iron deficiency. The shape of a fish was chosen as it was considered good luck in the local culture and was well received.

About seven years ago HealthBridge ran the ASAC project (with CARE and University of Toronto) in which cast iron cook pots were distibuted to households in Benin and Vietnam. We measured changes in iron status as the pots were used. As others have observed, iron status improved in those who used them consistently, but few households used them consistently. They were slow to heat, heavy, prone to rusting and discolouring the food and generally not liked. We had a few ideas of how to make it work better. Le Thi Thu had the great idea of a two-layered pot with steel on the inside (blue steel leaches iron almost as much as cast iron) and aluminum on the outside, and a lid of aluminum, which maintains the preferred colour and rust-resistance, while being lighter weight. I still have the prototype on my office desk. We also thought of trying some sort of iron insert that could be placed inside the aluminum cookware. In Cameroon there is a practice of putting a spoon in a pot whlie cooking. We thought a cast-iron spoon would be a simple yet effective innovation. However we didn't get the two-layer pot idea nor the iron spoon idea funded and eventually we dropped the idea. It is wonderful to see this research with the iron fish actually carried out and working. I do hope the researchers will be able to secure funding to advance this work.

What adaptations would be necessary to make it work in other countries (an iron lion, instead of iron fish, was suggested for Africa)? Could other metals, especially zinc and copper, be added in the right forms and proportions to allow for the delivery of multiple nutrients? I will track their progress with interest.