A massive de-worming drive would be held in the State on August 8 in which 42.77 lakh children between one to 19 years of age would be administered a tablet of ‘Albendazole’. Apart from the students of government schools, the health department has also targeted 12.44 lakh students of the private schools and 9.38 lakh out of school children. Addressing media persons at state health directorate here on Tuesday, the mission director National Health Mission (NHM), Yugal Kishore Pant said that the chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat would start the massive drive. Pant added that the objective of the drive is to make children free from helminthic diseases and thus improve their physical and mental health. The children who would be left out of the drive on August 8 due to various reasons would be covered under a mop up drive on August 16.
A survey by medical health and family welfare ministry indicate that 68 percent of the children in the state are affected by helminthic worms. The helminths are the parasites that absorb nutrition from the body tissues and induce malnutrition which adversely affect growth of body and apart from physical growth the worm also affects mental growth of the individual. The medical experts are of the view that de-worming helps in increasing attendance of students’ up to 25 percent in the schools.