NAIROBI, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's education ministry said Thursday it has dewormed six million school-age children between six and 14 years to help boost academic excellence and health of children.
The five-year deworming program, which was launched in 2012, targeted five million children every year.
Principal Secretary for Education Belio Sang said the program has improved health and nutritional incidents that has increased enrollment and stabilized attendance among pupils.
"School-based deworming has been carried out successfully over the last four years and peaked last year when more than 6.4 million children in over 16,000 primary schools were reached," the PS said.
Kenya has made significant progress in reducing the burden of parasitic worms among school children. The government has implemented previous school based deworming programmes targeting high burden counties.
"The successes of the program have been unmatched and it is no surprise that the country is seen as a model for other countries to learn from. Having a program exceed its target year after year can only be attributed to effective partnerships with dedicated stakeholders," Belio said.
The program is initiated and managed at the national level but is implemented at the county level with personnel from the respective ministries of education and health playing a joint leadership role in ensuring that the agenda is executed in every school within the targeted treatment areas.
Treatment takes place in schools across susceptible areas endemic for parasitic worm after selection of these areas has been determined according to World Health Organization (WHO) criteria.
The two types of worms treated by the program are soil-transmitted helminths (common worms) and schistosomes which cause bilharzia.
