Mass De-worming During 6-monthly Child Health Days in Uganda

The project

The project aimed to enhance communities' capacity to provide for their children. Project activities included: (1) growth monitoring and promotion for children under 6 years old (2) 6-monthly child days which provided an opportunity to communities to access integrated health services including vaccinations, vitamin tablets, nutrient tablets. In a randomly selected 25 of the 50 parishes (communities), children aged 1-7 attending the child days were given a single 400 mg tablet of chewable proprietary de-worming drug, albendazole (Zentel: GlaxoSmithKline), and all children attending the child days received an oral dose of 200,000 International Units (IU) vitamin A.

The impact evaluation results

The provision of periodic anthelmintic (i.e. de-worming drugs) had a significant impact on the rate of weight gain in young children of about 10% (0.2 kg/child/year) above expected weight gain if treatments are taken twice a year.

The impact evaluation method

The evaluation used randomization to allocate 50 communities (or more accurately, parishes) to treatment and control groups.