Effects of Aflatoxin Exposure on Children Health Outcomes in Tanzania

Policy Context

Aflatoxin (AF) is a toxin produced by Aspergillus flavus fungi that contaminates grains due to poor storage. In rural Tanzania, over 65 percent of children under five, particularly in maize-producing communities, show persistent high aflatoxin exposure.

Chronic exposure is associated with impaired child growth, compromised immune function, and iron deficiency. The causal chain runs from caregiver knowledge to child exposure: mothers often lack information on safe post-harvest handling, which contaminates the household maize supply. Children are especially vulnerable during the weaning transition, when maize-based foods, e.g porridges, become the primary food and exposure levels rise sharply.

Prior evaluations provided evidence that post-harvest strategies and storage technologies such as PICS bags each reduce AF exposure on their own.   A remaining gap is whether combining the two interventions further reduces children’s aflatoxin exposure beyond either component alone. This pilot co-designs an integrated intervention combining maternal post-harvest handling education with PICS bag use, guided by acceptability, feasibility, and sustainability.

Study Design

The pilot will be conducted in the rural communities of Babati and Hanang districts in the Manyara Region, Tanzania. The study is expected to take 7 months.

Focus group discussions with six to eight mothers of children under two will document post-harvest handling of grains, motivation for these practices, and their children’s dietary intake. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews with four community leaders, six officers, and two national-level policymakers on the post-harvest handling interventions needed to mitigate dietary AF exposure at the household level. 

Prior AF reduction interventions have shown that even effective approaches can fail when caregivers are not equipped to sustain them beyond the study period. Co-designing the intervention with caregivers and officers builds the operational fit, cultural acceptability, and community ownership needed for uptake to persist. The full-scale study can then test whether an intervention that rural households actually adopt reduces children’s aflatoxin exposure at scale.

Results and Policy Lessons

Results forthcoming.