The second National Deworming Day, scheduled for 10 February, was welcomed by Nadda on Tuesday as he championed the statistics of his ministry's deworming programme in 2015; 8.98 crore children in 4.70 lakh schools and 3.67 lakh Anganwadi centres across 277 districts with the aid of 9.49 lakh frontline workers.
The Central health ministry continued with the roll out of its ambitious targets and grand plans, with the launch of the National Deworming Day. As health minister JP Nadda administered the deworming drug albendazole to children at the launch in Hyderabad, those schoolchildren became the first of the ministry's targeted 27 crore children the drug is supposed to reach. The sheer number of children to be targeted has made the NDD the world's largest deworming programme.
The second National Deworming Day, scheduled for 10 February, was welcomed by Nadda on Tuesday as he championed the statistics of his ministry's deworming programme in 2015; 8.98 crore children in 4.70 lakh schools and 3.67 lakh Anganwadi centres across 277 districts with the aid of 9.49 lakh frontline workers. The target was originally 10.31 crore, which has now scaled up to "27 crore children in 536 districts", said the minister.
The scheme is ambitious and is part of the focus on child health care, countering malnutrition, anemia, impaired mental and physical development caused by the Soil Transmitted Helminth (STH) infections. Malnutrition especially has visibly been on the ministry's cards, especially after the government's own unflattering statistics about India's nutrition status came to light late last year; 8.7 per cent of children under 5 in India are stunted, which is a measure of chronic undernutrition. An additional 19.8 per cent are wasted.
Anaemia too has been a cause of concern and area of focus for the Indian Council of Medical Research to combat in 2016. To this end, ICMR's National Institute of Nutrition has been carrying out a pilot study in Hyderabad, on a micronutrient mix that brought anemia down by 38 percent among the children tested.
Leading up tp Tuesday's launch, there have been awareness programmes and drives carried out by school children in Bihar and Chhattisgarh. The albendazole tablets will be given freely in government schools and anganwadis, for children between 1-19 years of age, between 10 and 15 February, 15th being the mop-up day for any children left out.
India has the world's highest burden of STH infections, with 241 million children at risk according to the government's and the WHO's statistics. with 220 million children aged 1-14 estimated to be at risk of worm infections. Almost 7 in 10 children between 6 month and 5 years are anaemic, with even higher rates of anaemia in rural areas, according to the 2006 National Family Health Survey (2006).
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