Mission director national health mission department of Health and Family Welfare Nagaland Dr. Yankho Lotha declared that the state would be observing August as deworming month to achieve 100% target. He said this while launching the 2ndround National Deworming Day (NDD) at Ruzhükhrie government higher secondary school Kohima on Tuesday.
Dr. Lotha said the target beneficiaries of NDD would include children in the age group of 1-19 years, enrolled in all the government and government –aided schools, children enrolled in private schools, children registered at Anganwadi centres and unregistered and out-of-school children in Angawanwadis and schools.
He further informed that the school teachers would administer one Albendazole tablet to all school enrolled children and record the same in the attendance register while Anganwadi workers would administer tablet to all the children of 2-5 years and out-of-school children/adolescents and record the same in the register. Dr. Lotha informed that 1-2 years will be given half a dose of Albendazole tablet. Dr. Lotha informed that the awareness generation activities at community level to mobilize out of school children by ASHA. Dr. Lotha explained that the NDD was an initiative of the ministry of health and family welfare government of India where all the children between 1-19 years of age are targeted to receive treatment for parasitic intestinal worm through the platform of school and anganwadi centres. He informed that the first National Deworming Day was successfully implemented in 11 states in February 2015 deworming 89.8 million children in the age group between 1-19 years.
The mission director said World health organization (WHO) has recommended “deworming of all the school age and pre-school age children” with the target to eliminate morbidity due to worms (soil-transmitted helminthes) in children by 2020 where the government of India aims to cover atleast 90% of all the children through the NDD.
Dr. Lotha informed that with the government of India objective the state would be observing the 2nd round of NDD, to deworm all the children in the age group 1-19 years on August 10 followed by a mop-up day (MUD) on August 17 for children who had missed on August 10. He said all the schools and anganwadi centres in the state would be implementing with the objective to improve the overall health, nutritional status, access to education and quality of life of children.
Dr. Lotha informed that as the per the ministry directive the key stakeholders include ministry of health and family welfare, ministry of human resource and development (education), ministry of women and child development (social welfare) , ministry of drinking water and sanitation (PHED) and ministry of panchayat Raj (deputy commissioner).
The programme was chaired by director H&FW Dr. John Sweyievisa, while vote of thanks was proposed by satte programme officer (RCH) H&FW Dr. Bendangla Longkumer. Hundreds of Ruzhükhrie government higher secondary school Kohima students attended the launching programme.