Given Hapunda

220 lack of bioavailable iron in the diet. The prevalence of IDA among the children decreased in Soshanguve at follow-up, but increased in Evaton West and the Vaal region; however, this difference was not significant. Lesson learnt 1. Data collection : During this period, data were collected on different days because parents/caregivers had commitments and also that some of the children were absent, and this resulted in varying in all the results; this might have a negative impact on the findings. 2. Intervention : Implementation period was 7 months instead of 10 because of the 3-Month pre-school holidays. When arranging intervention at the school level, one should consider the holidays and weekends. This has impacted on the impact of the intervention. There are various factors that can have a negative impact towards the implementation of the feeding programme, such as diseases, hygiene, and safety. Food handlers were not formally trained on hygiene and safety when handling food. Children were not tested for HIV and it might have been the contributing factor on the impact of the feeding programme. 3. Ethics : Minimal biochemical parameters were tested because ethical approval for venous blood sampling was not granted. For this study, only haemoglobin parameters were measured for iron status and this limited the determination of other nutritional deficiencies that might have existed in the children. Conclusion This impact evaluation study showed participation as there were high drop-out rates at follow-up. Prevalence of stunting and underweight decreased in all study areas at follow-up, however, inconsistent results in terms of nutritional status and prevalence of IDA were observed. Prevalence of wasting and IDA was higher in Evaton West. In Soshanguve, the prevalence of wasting also increased whereas the prevalence of IDA decreased. The Vaal region showed a lower prevalence of wasting, but the prevalence of overweight and IDA was higher at follow-up. In both experimental groups, the prevalence of wasting increased during the course of the study. This may have been due to HIV infection, as wasting is a persistent significant clinical problem associated with HIV and AIDS, independent of increased dietary intakes (Grinspoon et al., 2003). Based on the findings, it can be concluded that all three of the study areas were poverty-stricken and that the resultant poor household food security brought about malnutrition in the children. Although few statistically significant differences were observed with regard to nutritional status and IDA, positive