Health ministry will give children strawberry flavoured tablets on 'National Deworming Day' August 10 to make them easier to swallow
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is promoting flavoured tablets for the National Deworming Day that will be held on Wednesday, in a bid to make children swallow their de-worming tablets easily.
Albendazole tablets are used for deworming around the world.
“The medicine comes in a tablet form which is sweet and chewable. It comes with different flavours like strawberry, vanilla, mango, etc,” said Priya Jha, India Country director at Evidence Action.
“In the first National Deworming Day held on February 10, 2015, we used a few flavours and children really liked them. We have decided to introduce more flavours this time because it will make easy for us to win children owing to its good taste,” she said.
The government is promoting flavoured tablets to help children take them more easily (Picture for representation).
Evidence Action, along with the World Health Organization and National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), is providing technical assistance to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on National Deworming Day.
“As the medicine is sourced and distributed locally, the availability of the flavours might not be uniform across the country, but children will really like and consume it easily without much persuasion as per our experience.
"It is very safe and has very few side-effects. When side-effects occur, they are typically a sign of high infection - which makes taking the treatment all the more important. Side-effects are mild, such as nausea and diarrhoea, and pass quickly,” said Jha.
The second edition of National Deworming Day hopes to combat the threat of parasitic worm infections in India among all children aged 1-19 in schools and pre-schools (anganwadis).
Children will be given 400 mg of chewable albendezole tablets at government, government-aided, and private schools, and anganwadis.
Out-of-school children will be administered the de-worming tablet at anganwadis.
The WHO indicates that India has the highest burden of Soil-Transmitted Helminths (STH) in the world, with 220 million children aged 1-14 estimated to be at risk of worm infection.
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Officials said that this time, there is a greater emphasis on including children from private schools in the National Deworming Day.
According to the Annual Status of Education Report, in 2014, 30.8 per cent of all 6-14 year old children in rural India are enrolled in private schools.
Also, five states in India now have private school enrolment rates in the elementary stage that are greater than 50 per cent.
These are Manipur (73.3 per cent), Kerala (62.2 per cent), Haryana (54.2 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (51.7 per cent), and Meghalaya (51.7 per cent).
“We have approached private schools. It will not be possible for this year due to shortage of time, but we have plans to include them next year,” said Jha.
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