Luanda - Three million 614 thousand 116 students, aged between five and 14, will be dewormed in the country, the Minister of Education, Luísa Grilo, announced Monday in Luanda.
According to the minister, the students will be dewormed during the Albendazole and praziquantel administration campaign, which will take place from 23 October to 3 November.
The minister was speaking at the opening ceremony of the training course aimed at provincial focal points for education and health, for the implementation of the school deworming campaign, which will cover the provinces of Benguela, Cabinda, Cunene, Lunda-Norte and Sul, Moxico, Namibe, Uíge and Zaire.
The campaign is part of subcomponent 1.1 of School Health, part of the Girls' Empowerment and Learning for All Project (PAT II).
According to the minister, school deworming is the collective and preventive treatment of students, which contributes to reducing the burden of infections caused by intestinal parasites, which allows children to grow up healthier and receive a quality education.
She said that since 2013, the Ministries of Education and Health, with the support of the World Health Organization, the World Bank and other partners, have been working on implementing school health projects nationwide.
These projects focus mainly on prevention, with emphasis on handwashing campaigns with soap and water, mass vaccination, and the promotion of lectures on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), among others.
She considered the issue of deworming to be challenging due to factors such as child labor, housing in rural areas without sanitary conditions, poor access to drinking water, basic sanitation, bad garbage disposal habits and open defecation, among others, which appear to be breeding grounds for and contagion of vector-borne diseases. CPM/OHA/TED/DOJ
