Micronutritional interventions clearly have a major role in improving womens health pregnancy birth outcomes and child survival. Future endeavours must focus on carefully designed nutritional research that could help elucidate the mechanisms by which micronutrients exert beneficial effects and increase our understanding of the interactions between micronutrients that influence their bioavailability. Prospective high quality community trials should look at the influence of maternal nutritional status on pregnancy and perinatal outcomes. They should also focus on identifying the optimal micronutritional approach (supplementation with single or multiple micronutrients) in representative populations and inform local policies. In due course the effectiveness of these approaches should be tested at the community level. Ultimately long term efforts should involve a multidimensional approach to bring about a global improvement in womens health precipitate social changes and bridge cultural gaps. (excerpt)