Five million school children receive treatment on mainland Tanzania

A mass treatment campaign by teachers and local health workers against schistosomiasis and intestinal helminths.

The National Schistosomiasis and Soil-transmitted Helminth Control Programme (NSSCP), based within the Ministry of Health and collaborating with the Ministry of Education and Culture, has finally commenced drug distribution targeting school children on mainland Tanzania. The NSSCP was launched on 2nd July 2005 by the Prime Minister the Hon. Frederick Sumaye and the Minister of Health Ms. Anna Abdallah, in the hope that treatment would start shortly after. The November treatment sees the culmination of a year of preparatory activities which have been carried out in both coastal and western Tanzania, including disease risk mapping, baseline data collection and training. The campaign is expected to reach 5 million school-age children in the areas with the highest burden of disease throughout November and December 2005, each child receiving an appropriate dosage of praziquantel for schistosomiasis (40 mg/kg body weight) and a single dose of albendazole (400 mg) for intestinal helminths.

The targeted regions for this round of mass drug administration include Mara, Mwanza, Kagera, Kigoma, Shinyanga and Tabora around Lake Victoria, in the West of Tanzania, and Lindi, Mtwara, Pwani, Tanga and Dar es Salaam along the Indian Ocean coast in the East.

During September and October 2005, specially designed container bags were prepared and filled with all the tools for drug distribution, including the praziquantel height dose pole, health education materials, treatment registers etc. One bag was delivered to each school taking part in the treatment programme even though many were located in some of the most remote areas in Tanzania. The correct quantities of the drugs, praziquantel (PZQ) and albendazole (ALB) were delivered to each District Headquarters by the National Medical Stores, and these were then distributed to every targeted school. Over 12 million tablets of praziquantel and 5 million tablets of albendazole were moved, including 4 million PZQ tablets manufactured by two Tanzanian pharmaceutical companies; Shelys, Dar es Salaam and TPI, Arusha. This is the first time SCI has used local companies for drug production and it is hoped that this will become a sustainable source of drugs for the programme in the future.

Additionally, 5.7 million of the PZQ tablets were donated by the pharmaceutical company MedPharm through the support of World Health Initiatives based in Canada and SCI and the Tanzanian Government gratefully acknowledge their support.

Teachers from every school in the selected districts needed to receive advance training on all aspects of this mass deworming and anti schistosomiasis campaign. The Regional and District School Health Coordinators played a key role and led cascaded training and social mobilisation throughout the districts to the ward and school levels in preparation for this school-based delivery of drugs to the children. Teachers received information about how the children were getting infected, the effects of infections, the disease consequences in later life, how treatment should be delivered, possible mild side effects and how to deal with them, and the importance of taking some food before taking the drugs. Treatment is conducted in each school by the school teachers and in the presence of the local health workers, school committee and local district authorities and is expected to be complete by mid December.