Background: In many low-income countries, children are at high risk of iodine deficiency disorders, including brain damage. In the early 1990s, Tanzania, a country that previously suffered from moderate to severe iodine deficiency, adopted universal salt iodation (USI) as an intervention strategy, but its impact remained unknown.

Tanzania has, over the past decade, made good progress toward universal salt iodization, but the most recent information and data reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, and published in the regular "scorecard" of progress by the Network for Sustained Iodine Nutrition (http://206.191.51.240/ Resources_Nutrition.htm), indicates that only 73.8% of households have access to iodized salt. Moreover, only 67% of the accessible salt is satisfactorily iodized to optimal levels. However, Tanzania has a functioning National Committee, appropriate legislation is in place, and a national officer responsible for salt iodization has been appointed. The country has also committed to assessing national progress in iodization coverage at least every five years. The study by Assey et al. confirms the well-known fact that populations living on islands or near seacoasts are not free from iodine-deficiency disorders. It has long been known that such populations are in need of daily intake of iodine. Nor are iodine-deficiency disorders limited to developing nations; they are a danger wherever iodine has been depleted from the soil. The most economic, efficient, and effective method of delivering iodine to the population every day in every village is via iodized salt.

Objective: To determine iodine levels in salt and iodine deficiency prevalence in school-aged children in 16 districts in Tanzania with previous severe iodine deficiency. Design: A cross-sectional study in schoolchildren. Systematic probability sampling was used to select schools and subjects for goitre assessment and urinary iodine determination. Setting: Sixteen districts randomly selected from the 27 categorised as severely iodinedeficient in Tanzania. Subjects: The study population was primary-school children aged 6-18 years who were examined for goitre prevalence and urinary iodine concentration (UIC). Salt samples from schoolchildren's homes and from shops were tested for iodine content. Results: The study revealed that 83.3% of households (n ¼ 21 160) in the surveyed districts used iodised salt. Also, 94% of sampled shops (n ¼ 397) sold iodised salt, with a median iodine level of 37.0 ppm (range 4.2-240 ppm). Median UIC in 2089 schoolchildren was 235.0 mg l 21 and 9.3% had UIC values below 50 mg l 21 . The overall unweighted mean visible and total goitre prevalence was 6.7% and 24.3%, respectively (n ¼ 16 222). The age group 6-12 years had the lowest goitre prevalence (3.6% visible and 18.0% total goitre, n ¼ 7147). The total goitre prevalence had decreased significantly in all districts from an unweighted mean of 65.4% in the 1980s to 24.3% in 1999 (P , 0.05). We believe this difference was also biologically significant. Conclusion: These findings indicate that iodine deficiency is largely eliminated in the 16 districts categorised as severely iodine-deficient in Tanzania, and that the iodine content of salt purchased from shops is highly variable.

Iron deficiency anaemia is highly prevalent in Tanzania-affecting predominantly children and women. Fortification of cereal flour with micro-nutrients is being carried out as a strategy for combating micro-nutrient deficiencies. Four different cereal flours were fortified with micro-nutrients and evaluated for total and bioavailable iron and zinc, iron binding polyphenolics, phytate content and ascorbic acid. The extractable total phenolics ranged from 1.3 (maize) to 19.4 (redsorghum) mg catechin equivalent (CE) g -1 . Catechols ranged from 1.1 (maize) to 11.7 (red-sorghum) mg CE g -1 . Red sorghum was the only flour that contained a high amount of galloyls (4.0 mg tannic acid equivalent (TAE) g -1 ). All samples contained high amounts of phytate (10.7 ± 1.0 µmol g -1 ). The average total iron was 42.26 ± 10.26 mg kg -1 in the unfortified and 52.67 ± 10.19 mg kg -1 in the fortified cereal flours and the average in vitro available iron was 1.03 ± 0.30 mg kg

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