Nutrition and home-economics programme in Egyptian villages.

In 1953 the Government of Egypt and F A 0 jointly undertook a demonstration project in agriculture, rural industries, nutrition and home economics, the object of which is to improve the standard of living of the Egyptian village population. The sponsoring ministry for the Government was the Ministry of Agriculture. Five villages in the Nile Delta about 45 km north-west of Cairo were selected for the demonstration, which was designated the ‘Sindibis Project’ from the name of the district concerned. The villages are typical Egyptian villages with flat-roofed mud houses closely packed together and surrounded by fertile fields. T h e people farm for themselves, work for the larger land holders, or are small tradesmen or craftsmen. There is no centre near enough to provide industrial employment. I was appointed by F A 0 in February 1954 to help in developing the nutritional and home-economics aspects of the project. Previously I had been Assistant Director, Nutrition Service, Community Service Society of New York and, more recently, Nutrition Consultant, Department of Health and Welfare, Maine, USA. The other two members of the F A 0 team were an agriculturist and an expert on rural industries. The same five villages in the Sindibis area had served from 1948 to 195 I as the locale of a study undertaken by the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, the purpose of which was ‘to define the health and sanitary problem, to develop a program for improving rural health and sanitation, and to determine the effectiveness of these measures’. The villages lie within the larger Calioub area in which WHO is assisting the Government of Egypt in another project known as the ‘Calioub Demonstration and Training Program’. This is planned as a long-term demonstration of decentralized administration of welfare services, including health, agriculture, social affairs and education. T h e area includes a population of zoo,ooo living in forty-three towns and villages. The F A 0 team was invited to act in a consultant capacity in the more extensive Calioub project while continuing demonstration work in the Sindibis villages. T h e programme now developing in the area is a co-operative enterprise in which the Ministries of Health, Agriculture, Social Affairs and Education, as well as WHO and FAO, are participating. I shall refer in this paper mainly to its nutritional and home-economics aspects, but emphasize the fact that the many problems of village life must be attacked simultaneously through co-ordinated efforts if progress is to be achieved. All my work has been done in association with Egyptian colleagues who have accompanied me on visits to villages and taken part in the surveys and demonstrations, as well as acting as interpreters. The training of local people is part of this,