Targeted interventions of ultra-poor women in rural Rangpur, Bangladesh: do they make a difference to appropriate cooking practices, food habits and sanitation?

: This study aimed to assess whether teaching good cooking practices, food habits and sanitation to ultra-poor rural women in four rural communities of Rangpur district, Bangladesh, with a high density of extremely poor households, would improve the overall health of the community. The sample size was 200 respondents combined from the target and control areas. In the target area, twelve in-depth interviews and four focus group discussions were undertaken for knowledge dissemination. Descriptive and mixed-model analyses were performed. The results show that washing hands with soap was 1.35 times more likely in the target than the control group (p<0.01). Further, after intervention, there was a significant improvement in hand-washing behaviour: before cutting vegetables, preparing food, feeding a child and eating, and after defecating and cleaning a baby (p<0.05). Also, the target group was more likely to moderately and briefly boil their vegetables and were 19% less likely to use maximum heat when cooking vegetables than the control group (p<0.01). Improved knowledge and skills training of ultra-poor women reduces the loss of nutrients during food preparation and increases their hygiene through hand-washing in every-day life.