Kenya national school-based deworming program

The program uses schools to treat students because they are already going to be there and the teachers are a trusted source to hand out medicine. For the last six years, the Ministry of Health organized treatments for roughly 6 million children each year!

The result is a substantial reduction in the prevalence of these diseases. When we met up with Samu and Valentiyne again, their school had gone through five rounds of yearly deworming treatment and their sixth would be happening shortly after our visit.

Samu was now a shy fifth grade student who likes to learn about science, specifically biology and how plants grow. She dreams of one day becoming a pilot. Valentiyne, now in the eighth grade, towers over her peers. She remembers our last visit when medicine was handed out five years ago.

When that medicine did not come before, sometimes our stomach was [hurting] in class when the teacher was teaching. After taking that medicine it became good, so it helped us in our bodies. To request wire transfer instructions, please contact Laura Parrotta at [email protected]. For any questions regarding donating via a donor-advised fund, please contact Laura Parrotta at [email protected].

Are you at least For any questions regarding donating via an IRA, k , or b , please contact Laura Parrotta at [email protected]. This program provided deworming tablets for soil-transmitted intestinal worms and schistosomiasis, as well as an instruction on how to avoid worm infections, to children in 75 primary schools in rural Busia, Kenya.

There were positive spillovers to children from reduced disease transmission among untreated children within treatment schools and for children who attended schools within three kilometers of treatment schools. Unlike previous studies, researchers quantified these spillover effects and showed that previous studies had underestimated the benefits of deworming. A long-term follow-up found that deworming also improved school performance and future earnings. Deworming led to large academic gains for girls, increasing the rate at which girls passed the secondary school entrance exam by 9.

Men who were dewormed as children worked 3. Among interventions that have been rigorously tested by randomized evaluations, school-based deworming is one of the most cost-effective means of increasing school attendance. In response, Deworm the World DtW was launched as an independent organization to coordinate technical assistance and advocacy efforts for sustainable, large-scale school-based deworming programs.

DtW is now a program of the nonprofit organization Evidence Action, which builds long-term partnerships and provides technical assistance to help governments launch, monitor, and sustain school-based deworming programs. Following these discussions, the Government of Bihar, with support from Deworm the World, launched a state-wide deworming campaign in , which reached 17 million children. Other large-scale deworming programs in India were implemented in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, and Rajasthan.

In February , the Government of India launched a national deworming program and in October, India announced it had treated However, due to supply chain issues we are helping to solve, deworming has been delayed with no new date having been set.

In the past months, as the COVID infections have decreased and schools have started to reopen, we have been working closely with government partners and our implementing partner organization IRD Pakistan to prepare for deworming across Islamabad Capital Territory, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh from August through October , with a target of approximately 10 million school-age children.

Owing to the large proportions of school-age children who are inaccessible or difficult to reach, such as children who are attending unregistered private schools or religious schools madrassas , as well as out of school children, the deworming programs are leveraging community health workers, along with teachers in schools, to deliver treatment. To account for the change in delivery platform, we have adapted all aspects of the deworming program, such as microplanning, training, community mobilization, and monitoring and evaluation.

Pakistan also launched its first national deworming awareness campaign in August , aimed at increasing the awareness of intestinal worm infections as a public health problem, and increasing demand for deworming from governments, parents, teachers, and children. The Government of Pakistan has pioneered this campaign with the goal of achieving widespread national recognition for the Pakistan Deworming Initiative.

As part of this campaign, we supported the development of a television commercial , a cartoon series, as well as several public service messages by key government stakeholders and celebrities.

All content is currently being disseminated through television, radio, and social media. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Skip to content Post author: Evidence Action Post published: August 30, In the past few months, despite continued school closures, disruption to global supply chains, and new waves of COVID infections, our Deworm the World Initiative has remained active across every country where we operate.

India In India, for the upcoming National Deworming Day NDD , which will be held at different dates between August and October , ten Evidence Action-supported states are planning to continue with the community-based approach we helped the Government of India introduce last year , and one will conduct a mixed strategy combining community-based and school-based deworming.

Nigeria In May , we worked with the Lagos State government to implement the first large-scale deworming campaign in Lagos targeting 1. Please Share This Share this content Opens in a new window Opens in a new window Opens in a new window Opens in a new window Opens in a new window Opens in a new window. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Comment.