Children Without Worms

Soil-transmitted helminthiasis

Soil-transmitted helminthiasis is a neglected tropical disease as a result of infection of intestinal parasites such as roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), hookworms (Ancylostoma duodenale and Necator americanus), and pinworm/threadworm (Strongyloides stercoralis). Most prevalent in the impoverished tropical and subtropical regions of Subsaharan Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and China, where sanitation and hygiene are poor, the disease is an enormous burden on humanity, amounting to 135,000 deaths every year, and persistent infection of more than two billion people. The long-term impact is even worse. In these regions, the disease is the single most debilitating cause of intellectual and physical retardation. Thus it remains a relentless factor of backwardness in socio-economic and human development.

Objectives

CWW basically is an aim to control STH in children by:

1. Supporting recipient countries in reducing STH infections as a public health and child development problem in accord with the 2001 resolution of the World Health Assembly by donating mebendazole for children in order to reduce associated morbidities, enhance education and promote development.
2. Encouraging recipient countries to establish a comprehensive and sustainable STH control policy that combines mass deworming with the promotion of health education and improvements in sanitation and safe water supplies.
3. Increasing the use of effective partnerships at the country level.

Strategy of Action

CWW targets children of school age through a slogan called the WASHED Framework, which includes systematic promotion of provision of water, sanitation, hygiene education, and deworming. Since helminth infections are not easily controlled by a simple treatment regime at a specific target level, CWW made a coordinated plan to improve:

1. Water - Access to drinking water for hand-washing and cleaning of foodstuffs to prevent or minimize reinfection.
2. Sanitation – Hygienic toilets and fecal sludge management keep infected human excreta from human activities, thereby minimizing the risk of reinfection in treated individuals and preventing new infections.
3. Hygiene Education - It promotes personal and environmental hygiene in communities where infection is endemic, thus reducing the recurrent infections.
4. Deworming - Treatment with broad-spectrum anthelmintic drugs like albendazole and Vermox (mebendazole) effectively eliminates the intestinal worms, thus the most effective component of the action.

Implementation of action

CWW oversees the donation of anthelmintics to the Ministries of Health and Education in eight recipient countries, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Lao PDR, Nicaragua, Uganda and Zambia. The annual donation consists of 200 million tablets of mebendazole from Johnson & Johnson, and 400 million tablets of albendazole from GlaxoSmithKline, and these are estimated for the treatment of up to 300 million children twice a year.

The London Declaration

CWW joined forces with the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's 13 leading pharmaceutical companies, and governments of US, UK, United Arab Emirate, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mozambique and Tanzania, to implement the largest global health programme called the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases on 30 January 2012 in London. The ambitious project is to control or eradicate the major neglected tropical diseases. Under this programme, CWW will continue to disseminate drugs through for the projected eradication by 2020.