The Ghana Health Service (GHS) in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service (GES) has begun the nationwide administration of medicines to deworm children of school-going age.
The exercise, which started on November 1, is targeting a total of 6,597,027 children in 22,938 schools and 151 districts across the country.
During the period which would last till November 10, Praziquantel (600mg) and Albendazole (400mg) tablets would be administered to each child using height as the dosage measurement.
Director-General of GHS, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, speaking at a press conference in Accra said the World Health Organisation (WHO) had estimated that over one billion people worldwide are affected with intestinal worms, with 880 million school-aged children requiring treatment.
He stated that the infections were contracted through “infested water bodies or soil contaminated with fecal matter resulting in bilharzia (schistosomiasis) or soil worm infection (helminthiasis) and have its highest prevalence in school-age children, which is 5-14 years.”
He, therefore, stressed that deworming would “improve health and school participation for both treated and untreated school-age children.”
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) Programmes Manager, Dr. Kofi Asemanyi-Mensah, indicated that the National School-based deworming exercise was a cost-effective way of delivering regular deworming medicines to children on a large scale.
He said children who were out of school were to be mobilised and sent to nearby schools to be dewormed, and that “teachers would be responsible for delivering the deworming medicines to the school-age children at their respective schools with assistance from local health workers.”
Dr. Asemanyi-Mensah emphasised the need for the medicines to be taken after meals and charged teachers to ensure that the medicines were administered to the kids after they had eaten, and urged parents and guardians to ensure their wards had eaten before going to school.
“All children would be required to eat before taking the medication. Preferably, medicines should be administered immediately after the first break or after children have been served with food by the programme to give the assurance that all children have eaten,” he said.
He assured that the medicines were safe for use and had little to no discomforts, adding that every school had been linked to a health facility that would manage any adverse drug effect for free.
Director, School Health Education of GES, Nana Esi Inkoom, who represented the Director-General of the GES Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, said training had been given to teachers across the country, adding that the consent of parents and guardians has also been sought for the exercise.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri