We’ve supported India’s National Deworming Day for the last ~4 years, but monitoring a program of such magnitude isn't easy. Our data collection has had to evolve with scale in order to continually support cost-effectiveness and maximize efficiency.
The Government of Pakistan has initiated the “Deworm Islamabad Initiative,” targeting 570,000 children aged 5-15 in Islamabad who are at risk of infection with intestinal worms. Trained school teachers administered free-of-cost deworming medicine (mebendazole), which is universally recognized as a safe and cost-effective treatment.
There is a difference between a low-cost program and a cost-effective program. Implementing a low-cost program is not sufficient - we want to ensure that the impacts of the program are measurable and that the benefits outweigh the costs - this is what makes a program truly cost-effective. Putting these two parts of the equation - costs and benefits - together, we can estimate the value for money of our program.