WHO staff from the Regional office trained a team from the Paediatric Department and Poison Control Centre of Allied Hospital / Punjab Medical College, Faisalabad, Pakistan, from 10 to 14 October 2011 on research methodology on a study to validate a clinical decision rule on hydrocarbon poisoning. The rule had been derived earlier in a study at Ain Shams Hospital, Cairo, where it had a sensitivity of 98%, and needed to be validated in another setting. Unintentional ingestion of kerosene in children is common in developing countries. The rule, for use at primary health care facilities and following the algorithm approach of IMCI, relies only on a few clinical signs and aims at predicting within two hours of the accident which children below five years old will have a more severe course requiring referral to a higher level facility and which ones will have a milder course and could be sent home. Analysis of the data from this prospective study is expected to start in 2012.