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• In Bangladesh, children receive deworming tablets every 6 months, together with iron and vitamin A supplementation. The children are less anemic and are doing better in school than they did previously, but parasite rates remain high because of poor hygiene practices, which allow children to become re-infected. • In both Mali and Malawi, communities have successfully provided water and latrines in schools in the area of intervention, but most of these schools lack the soap needed to ensure effective hand washing. • The school malaria treatment program in Malawi has improved child survival rates and reduced absenteeism, but changes in drug protocols have resulted in school-based treatments being stopped (see the malaria section in chapter 3). In all cases where data were collected—typically before and after interventions—there were improvements in educational measures, including attendance, enrollment, and dropout rates, as well as in the results of national standard tests and reading tests.
Deworm the World: Improving Children’s Educational Development through School-Based Deworming* School-based deworming is now recognized as a significant contribution to the achievement of the Education for All initiative and the education Millennium Development Goals. It is one of the most cost-effective methods of improving attendance and overall schooling outcomes, but of the 400 million school-age children who are infected, the vast majority remain untreated. In response to this situation, Deworm the World (DtW) was launched by the Education Task Force of the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2007. DtW coordinates partner actions to identify and remove barriers to the effective implementation of systematic, scaled, and sustainable school-based deworming programs. The coalition now includes more than 50 governmental, technical, and financial partners and is working in more than 26 countries around the world. In 2009, DtW supported government actions to target more than 20 million children. These same 20 million children will continue to be targeted in 2010, along with an expected 30 million or more. Because these school-based deworming programs can operate at a cost far less
* This section was contributed by Lesley Drake, Ruth Dixon, and Alissa Fishbane.