20 Jan 2022

Parents have been urged to encourage and allow children to take soil transmitted helminths medication for the prevention of intestinal worms.

Chief medical officer and programme manager of Tuberculosis and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Dr Tuduetso Molefe, said some parents were reluctant to permit such treatment saying their children did not have intestinal worms.

She said having the medication administered was the only way one could be sure that children were indeed worm free, adding that some children could have worms but without any symptoms or signs.  

Dr Molefe said soil transmitted helminths was among the 20 diseases currently classified as NTDs by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and were targeted for control, elimination or eradication by 2030.

She said soil transmitted helminths were worms that lived in human intestines, after being acquired through contact with soil contaminated with faecal matters.

She highlighted that the infection was more common in children up to the age of 15 years, due to them playing in the soil, walking barefoot and also not washing their hands adequately.

She said helminthes were also termed a disease of poverty as there were more prevalent in low socioeconomic conditions, where sanitation and hygiene were not always adequate and overcrowding maybe common.

She said soil transmitted helminths affected the health of children, causing longstanding disease and suffering as they commonly lead to nutrient deficiencies, which lead to poor growth, poor learning capacity at school and eventually poor economic outputs when these children reach adulthood.

 “The children are given a chewable tablet of either albendazole or mebendazole at school and the tablet is safe for all and has no serious side effects,” stated Dr Molefe.

She said Botswana conducted a survey for soil transmitted helminths among primary school children in 2015, which established that eight districts had a prevalence of the disease - above 15 percent.

She said following those findings, the Ministry of Health and Wellness, with the support of WHO, has been conducting annual treatments with antihelminthic medicines for all children in that age group in the affected districts.

She said the aim of the treatment was to treat children who were infected, and prevent infection in those who were exposed or at risk of infection.

“When we do this we are able to break the life cycle of the worms and prevent their spread in the community and preserve the health of our children” Dr Molefe stressed.

She said in August 2021, the Ministry of Health and Wellness, with technical support from WHO and financial support from the Embassy of Japan in Botswana, conducted a survey in districts that were affected to establish the impact of the treatments over the past five years.

Dr Molefe said the data from the survey was still being analysed, adding that they hoped that the prevalence of soil transmitted diseases would have decreased in some districts, and that some would no longer need treatment. ENDS