Deworming campaign: Slum kids to be given tablets from next week

Unhygienic environment, food and consuming dust cited as major factors.

ISLAMABAD:

The Directorate of Health Services of the Capital Development Authority in collaboration with an international organisation is starting a deworming campaign for children residing in the capital’s slums.

Speaking to The Express Tribune on Thursday, Director Health Services Dr Hassan Urooj said over 3,000 children aged between two to five years will be given deworming tablets during the campaign. “Currently there are no statistics available for children afflicted with worms but it is very common among children in this age bracket,” he said. Children are more prone to worms due to unhygienic conditions, food and consuming dust.

Training for team members will begin from Friday and the campaign will kick off next week. These teams will go door-to-door to give tablets to children in slums, Dr Urooj added. In the initial stage, only a few slums will be targeted before the campaign is extended to include all slum areas and it will be executed in phases. “Due to the presence of worms in the stomach, children are more likely to suffer from anaemia,” he said.

Meanwhile, speaking to The Express Tribune, residents of one of the slum said that even though they reside in the heart of the capital, they are deprived of basic necessities of life. They were of the view that administering medication to their children cannot be a permanent solution to the problem because they have to live in an unhygienic environment throughout their life.

“Though we get water from filtration plants, we don’t have a clean place to store it and the same goes for food besides which there is no proper shelter, so definitely our children are prone to diseases,” said Shaista*, a mother of three who works as a housemaid.

“I leave for work early morning and there’s no one to stop my children from playing in the dust or eating unhygienic snacks,” Shaista added. We cannot send our children to schools due to poverty, she said.

Dr Tabish Hazir, Pediatrics professor at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, said it was a fact that children living in slums were prone to various diseases including worms due to the unhygienic environment and especially due to the unavailability of clean drinking water.

Published In The Express Tribune, June 8^th, 2012.