Our Dispensers for Safe Water program operates at scale across Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi, providing safe water access to 4 million people today. In this post, we share a video highlighting how we've continued to iterate and adapt our dispensers to better meet user needs and maintain the low cost-per-person that makes this program a recognized standout in cost-effectiveness.
Evidence Action’s Deworm the World Initiative calculates what it costs to deworm a child in the countries that we work in. You might have seen the ‘cost per child per year’ to treat for parasitic worms cited in our materials and that of others.
So how do we calculate that cost? In the spirit of transparency (and in hopes of clearing up any misconceptions about how we determine our supported deworming programs’ cost per child), let’s talk costing! Here is how we calculate the cost per child/per year for deworming.
Intestinal worm infections are among the most widespread diseases globally today that affect more than a billion people especially in low-income countries. These parasites--roundworms, hookworms, and whipworms--affect especially school-age children, causing malnutrition, fatigue, and even organ damage and internal bleeding. Periodic and presumptive mass treatment of every child is inexpensive, considered very safe, and is recommended WHO policy in areas where worms are endemic. A number of countries have made school-based deworming part and parcel of their national health and education policies.
Yet, some have argued that the WHO recommendation of mass treatment of everyone in an affected area is not supported by enough evidence.
In a new paper, authors Amrita Ahuja, Sarah Baird, Michael Kremer et al. argue that mass deworming treatment is not only effective for children, supported by ample and growing rigorous evidence, but also smart educational and economic policy for endemic countries.