NCT07592260 OptiMAx Will Test Whether SQ-LNS Incentivises Vaccination Uptake in Rural Chad and Niger, With a Cost Effectiveness Analysis. It Will Also Look at Whether Having Received SQ-LNS Before Becoming Malnourished Leads to Better Outcomes for Children Treated Under the OptiMA Protocol.

Eligibility & Interventions

Eligibility Fast-Check

Enter your details for a quick preliminary check. This does not replace medical advice.

What to Expect as a Participant

You will actively receive the study intervention — which may be a drug, biologic, device, or procedure.

This trial targets 20,000 participants in total. It began in 2025-05-01 with a primary completion date of 2026-12.

Brief Summary

Malnutrition and infectious disease form a vicious circle, posing a double threat to vulnerable children in low- and middle-income countries. Malnutrition makes children more vulnerable to infectious diseases, while infectious diseases increase the risk of malnutrition. When caught in this cycle, children are far more likely to die or suffer adverse effects on their health and development. High rates of wasting and low immunization coverage also constitute a weakening double burden for already fragile health systems. Every year in these contexts, hundreds of thousands of children are treated for severe wasting, while at the same time suffering repeated and prolonged epidemics of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles. Rural areas of Chad and Niger are at the heart of this dynamic, recording some of the worst indicators of malnutrition and low vaccination coverage rates. Small-quantity lipid-based nutritional supplements (SQ-LNS) are a category of ready-to-use, nutrient-dense food supplements fortified with micronutrients, designed to prevent malnutrition and improve child survival, growth and development. A recent meta-analysis on SQ-LNS reveals that giving a child just one sachet of SQ-LNS a day for a year can reduce the risk of mortality by 27%, iron-deficiency anemia by 64%, severe wasting by 31% and severe stunting by 17%. The recent World Health Organization (WHO) guideline on complementary feeding of infants and young children aged 6 to 23 months recently recommended the use of SQ-LNS in certain contexts of food insecurity, based on evidence deemed "very safe". The distribution of SQ-LNS is also promising as an incentive for vaccination, as well as for other health services, such as participation in infant growth monitoring programs. Various operational experiences suggest that it is likely to have an impact on increasing vaccination coverage, and a modeling simulation suggests that it would lead to a significant reduction in measles morbidity and mortality. The main objective of OptiMAx is to estimate the effectiveness of a mass SQ-LNS supplementation program coupled with the routine immunization program compared with the routine immunization program alone in terms of vaccination coverage against pentavalent 1 (Niger) and measles 1 (Chad), after 12 months of program implementation, in children aged 12 to 23 months as part of an annual cross-sectional household survey. Secondary objectives include: * Estimate the effectiveness of a mass SQ-LNS supplementation program combined with the routine Essential Program on Immunization (EPI) compared with the routine EPI alone in children aged 6-18 months, after 12 months of program implementation, in terms of 1) coverage of pentavalent 3 vaccine, malaria and other childhood vaccines, 2) on-time immunization for age-eligible children. * Evaluate the feasibility and reliability of combining measles and pentavalent coverage measurements during annual MUAC-family training campaigns;. * Evaluate outcomes of acutely malnourished children who received SQ-LNS supplementation prior to RUTF treatment (as part of their inclusion in the OptiMA study) versus those who did not receive SQ-LNS supplementation The specific objectives of the process evaluation (with a sub-study on gender), modeling and economic evaluation are as follows: 1. Conduct a process evaluation of the OptiMAx intervention to understand how it works, for whom and where; 2. Understand to what extent and how gender-related facilitations and barriers affect the interaction and uptake of intervention, both on the demand side (health-seeking/intervention behaviors) and the supply side (provision of intervention services). 3. Estimate the health impact of the OptiMAx intervention, in terms of nutrition and vaccine-preventable diseases, using mathematical modeling approaches. 4. Quantify the relative costs associated with the OptiMAx intervention compared with the costs associated with existing vaccination activities in Mirriah, Niger, and Ngouri, Chad. 5. Estimate the cost-effectiveness of the OptiMAx intervention in Mirriah, Niger, and Ngouri, Chad.

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria: * All non-malnourished children between 6 and 12 months of age will be eligible for SQ-LNS supplementation until they reach 18 months of age. For the annual household surveys, * Children aged 6 to 59 months will be surveyed on MUAC status and other malnutrition-related issues, while the immunization analysis will focus on children aged 12 to 23 months; * With the informed oral consent of the parents or legal guardian ; * Reside in the neighborhoods included in the study. For the mixed-methods process evaluation and gender sub-study (to be carried out in the months following implementation). Inclusion criteria * OptiMAx intervention personnel (e.g. healthcare staff) * A group of mothers of children benefiting from the intervention * Male partners/spouses of parents * Community members from the sites targeted by the intervention will be recruited for the focus groups. * Non-adherents or parents who choose not to continue nutritional supplementation and/or vaccination despite their availability under the program will be recruited for interviews. * Husbands/male partners of non-members will also be surveyed. Exclusion Criteria: * Age-eligible children with MUAC \<125 or edema will first be treated for acute malnutrition with OptiMA and then resume supplementation with SQ-LNS. There is no exclusion criteria for the annual household surveys Exclusion criteria for the mixed-methods process evaluation \- Parents or guardians under 15 years of age.

Contact & Investigator

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Trials