BY DELISA THWALA
MBABANE– After a three-year break due to the COVID-19 outbreak the exercise of de-worming is going to officially begin on Monday.
This was announced by Epidemiologist Vusi Lokotfwako during a live interview with Eswatini Broadcasting Services today (EBIS).
He said the country will engage in a two-week national deworming campaign, which is set to begin on Monday, and ending on April 04, 2023.
This exercise comes after a three-year break following the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the deworming exercise is the distribution of iron and folic acid tablets that is suspected to have caused giddiness, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain in over 400 children aged 12-13 years.
It further states that untreated worm infections prevent children’s healthy growth, cause poor nutrition and reduce their capacity to concentrate and learn. The treatment is simple, safe, effective and free of charge.
A single dose of deworming treatment drastically reduces the number of worms in each child
Generally, children should deworm every six months and adults every 12 months. The target is to reach at least 75 per cent of the school-aged children, who are said to be at high-risk for bilharzia and intestinal worms infections.
The exercise will be conducted by the Ministry of Health with support from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF, targeting school-going children.
Lokotfwako said there were around 50 per cent of schools at high risk areas, while 10 per cent to 50 per cent were at moderate risk areas.
Lokotfwako further mentioned that around one per cent to 10 per cent schools were at low risk. He stated that the recommended strategy was that in the high risk areas, they would be deworming all school-aged children at least once a year. In the moderate risk areas, he said the target was to deworm all school-aged children once every two years, while in low risk areas, they would deworm twice during the children’s primary school years.
However, he said parents signed consent forms on behalf of their children for the deworming exercise.
He said to deworm against bilharzia, they used praziquantel and for intestinal worms they used albendazole.
The epidemiologist stated that the medication was very expensive. Praziquantel kills the parasites that cause bilharzia and albendazole kills intestinal worms.
he said the service was offered by government for free and urged parents to be supportive and sign the consent forms for their children. Lokotfwako said some parents denied their children a chance for the medication by not consenting and when they happened to fall sick with the disease in future, it became costly to treat the diseases.
He said the deworming tablets were safe but it was advisable that they should not be used on empty stomachs, especially the biharzia tablet (praziquantelle). Lokotfwako said only epileptic people were discouraged from taking the medication.
Meanwhile, Lokotfwako stated that in the context of Eswatini, a mapping exercise was done and the data informed interventions in terms of mass medicines administrations. He said the exercise came after a WHO recommendation in 2015, whereby the ministries of Health and Education and Training, with partners, conducted the mapping survey on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD).
This, he said, was in order to know the disease burden which the country was faced with.
“The result from the mapping was to inform how to administer the mass medicine administration and other surveillance activities,” he said.
He stated that a total of 13 750 learners were reached from 275 schools that participated in the survey. Explaining the process, he narrated that laboratory technologist examined urine and stools from learners for bilharzia and intestinal worms.
Worth noting is that in 2018 The Kingdom of Eswatini surpassed the target set by WHO for deworming coverage and obtained 85 per cent during the third round of the Mass Medicine Administration (MMA) campaign. The annual campaign was conducted from June 11- 27 2018.
