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Haiti

Deworming campaign in Northern Haiti reaches 700 000 children

A campaign to rid 700,000 children in northern Haiti of worms is drawing to a successful close, with huge benefits for the children's nutritional status, growth and intellectual development. Anne Poulsen reports.

Enjoying an early morning break, the 660 girls of the Ecole Nationale Fanelie Francois primary school in the coastal town of Cap Haitien in Northern Haiti have transformed the school yard into an ocean of blue uniforms and ribbons.

At the sound of the bell, they hurriedly form a number of long lines and one by one find their way to the classrooms. Here their teachers are waiting, each with a little plastic bag full of white tablets.

The deworming campaign in the North and North East Departments of Haiti supported by WFP and covering almost 700,000 children is reaching its final stage.

BITTER TABLET

The time has now come for the final step: swallowing the bitter tablet of albendazole, a highly effective but very inexpensive drug.

Each tablet containing a full dose of albendazole costs just US$ 0.02, but the effect the drug has on the children's nutritional status, growth and intellectual development is invaluable.

SWALLOWING

The children seem to understand the importance of the deworming tablet - most of them at least, who swallow their tablet without further ado.

A few, however, are trying hard to avoid the tablet by hiding it in their mouths so that they can spit it out again, when the teachers aren't looking.

But the teachers are merciless - no child is leaving the line unless they have swallowed a tablet.

DEWORMING CAMPAIGN

In partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the French Cooperation, USAID, Plan and UNICEF, WFP has been actively supporting the Haitian government's deworming campaign.

The project began last year with a series of WFP preliminary and preparatory awareness and information sessions at WFP-supported schools.

TRAINING SESSIONS

This was followed by a series of training sessions on the administration of the deworming tablets involving staff from the Ministries of Health and Education.

The training involved some 16,000 employees working in the education sector across the two departments, including inspectors, school directors and teachers.

SUPPORT FROM WFP

According to Joceline Jean Jacques, who is responsible for the school health section within the Ministry of Health, this campaign would not have been possible without support from WFP.

"WFP has organised the training, providing us with the materials, the monitors, the logistics and the technical support," she says.

BASIC HYGIENE

The element of education is very important in this campaign," she adds. "You can give the children a tablet, but if they are not taught basic hygiene, they will not know how to avoid worms in the future.

"The support from WFP has been extremely important for the campaign, and therefore for the nutritional and health status of the children in this area."

CHRONIC MALNUTRITION

Malnourished children become more malnourished when infected with worms. In Haiti chronic malnutrition is widespread, with severe or moderate stunting affecting 42 percent of children under five.

According to WHO, the consequences of worm infections for health and development are enormous.

ENORMOUS CONSEQUENCES

Aside from permanent organ damage, worm infections cause anaemia, poor physical growth, poor intellectual development and impaired cognitive function.

And they do so at a very critical time in a child's life: infection reaches maximum intensity between the ages of five and 14.

OBVIOUS TOOL

For WFP, the deworming campaign is an obvious tool to improve the nutritional status, growth and intellectual development of children in Haiti's poor North and North East Departments, areas already supported under WFP's school feeding programme.

"While WFP offers food to thousands of needy children in school, it is also our obligation to ensure that they benefit from this food," says Marie Josette Pierre, WFP's programme officer.

HEARTBREAKING

"It's distressing to see hungry children who against all odds try to learn how to read and write, but it is even more heartbreaking to know that the hot meal we offer these children - for most of them the only meal they will get that day - only serves to feed the worms.

"This is why WFP decided - together with Plan-Haiti - to finance this deworming campaign in every school in the North and North-East Departments, which has been launched and carried out by the Ministries of Health and Education."