This past year we treated and protected 150,000 children from intestinal worms. In 2016, we plan to help protect 175,000 children from intestinal worm infections.
Intestinal worms are the most common infection of children in Haiti (90% infected, World Health Organization). Many of these children come from impoverished families. Intestinal worms cause children to have diarrhea and severe stomach aches, often leading to inflated school absenteeism rates. To make matters worse, intestinal worms can take away up to 20% of a child’s daily nutritional intake. The way to treat and protect children from intestinal worms is through the administration of a tablet called Albendazole.
It only costs 2 US Cents to provide the amount of Albendazole necessary to treat and then protect a child in Haiti from intestinal worm infections for an entire year. Through public health-led studies it has been shown that de-worming programs similar to ours reduces school absenteeism by 25%.
This improvement in school attendance has improved the adult wage earnings of these children enrolled in the program by 23% — a tremendous long-term benefit to the children themselves and their future families. We have provided 56 Haitian schools with Albendazole ourselves and work with Planting Peace, Samaritan’s Purse and AmeriCares to provide clinics and hospitals with everyday access to the de-worming medication so we can prevent children from becoming sick with intestinal worms in the future.