DepEd, DOH conducts Deworming Program

The Department of Education (DepEd) partners with the Department of Health (DOH) to achieve its goal of eliminating the intestinal parasitism in all public elementary school learners nationwide through a Mass Deworming Program.

The advocacy intensifies as they also encourage private schools to to let their enrolled students participate in this activity. Private Schools may coordinate to the Dep Ed Regional Office for the allotment of Deworming medicines.

DOH provides the medicines to be administered as a single dose once every six months to ensure the elimination of all types of worms. The medicines to be given are Albendazole 400mg or Mebendazole 500mg, both recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and DOH.

The medicine is given to school-aged children by DepEd health personnel with the help from Local Government Units (LGUs). The Mass Deworming program or the Integrated Helminth Control Program helps to reduce the prevalence of soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH) among children.

For the first round in school year 2015-2016 conducted in July, DepEd and DOH had distributed deworming medicines to 11.8 million school-aged children or 80.56% of the target learners. In the second round in January, the program served 10.6 million school-aged children or 73.3% of the total number of target learners.

If not treated, STH may lead to malnutrition, anemia, growth retardation, impaired cognitive functions and other health problems.