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Globally, up to 400 million children suffer unnecessarily from intestinal worms, but fewer than 20 percent of at-risk children are reached with de-worming treatments. Left untreated, intestinal worms cause severe disability and sometimes death.
A Call to Action
Our global program Children Without Worms, created in partnership with the Task Force for Child Survival and Development, is working with national and international partners to treat up to 25 million children a year with our drug mebendazole.
Partnering for the Future
Children Without Worms goes beyond the donation of mebendazole. To implement sustainable programs that include hygiene education and improved sanitation facilities, the program works to establish partnerships at the international and national levels. For example:
- Children Without Worms received a grant from the Izumi Foundation to support the distribution of mebendazole and the development of health education materials in Zambia.
- The program is working in Bangladesh, Uganda and Zambia to convene meetings of all national stakeholders in order to establish strategies that will reduce the burden of intestinal worms through treatment with mebendazole, hygiene education and sanitation improvements.
- In Cameroon and Zambia, Children Without Worms collaborated with the Ministries of Health to implement surveys to identify children at the highest risk of disease.
- Four additional countries - Cambodia, Cape Verde, Laos and Nicaragua - are receiving mebendazole donations in 2008.
Children Without Worms will continue to develop partnerships to raise awareness and resources for sustainable control of intestinal worms.
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