Our work in India
We have improved child and adolescent health in India for a decade through close government partnerships.
Through EAII Advisors, our technical partner, over 100 full-time staff in 12 offices support state governments in delivering deworming treatment and iron and folic acid supplementation in schools.
We currently support 11 state governments: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tripura, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh.
Our support of the government’s National Deworming Day has helped make it the largest single-day public health program in the world.
We supported the launch of the National Deworming Day program following the success of school-based deworming in a few states where we provided technical assistance. The program rapidly expanded from reaching less than 30 million children in 2014 to over 260 million by 2017 — and continues to reach over 200 million children annually today. Our technical assistance to state governments is highly leveraged through the government investment in deworming, amounting to tens of millions of dollars each year. This long-standing program is having a tremendous impact on the health of children across India; our impact assessments provide evidence of significant declines in worm prevalence.
We expanded our work in India to include iron and folic acid supplementation.
In 2019, at their request, we began providing technical assistance to state governments. India carries 35% of the global anemia burden, with anemia being the second-leading cause of child disability. In 2022 alone, we supported state governments to deliver more than 13 million iron and folic acid treatments to children and adolescents, all for an average of $0.50 per child per year.
Our next frontier: safe water access.
In 2023, we launched a water treatment pilot in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan, seeking to apply learnings from our safe water work in Africa to help expand access to chlorination in rural areas of India. We’re seeking to determine the best way to deploy effective chlorination technologies in different water systems, and hope to support state governments in scaling up safe water access to millions of people over the next several years.
Our programs in India address critical health issues that disproportionately impact impoverished communities. Our interventions reduce these burdens, making children stronger and improving their long-term wellbeing.
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Equal Vitamin Access
Launched
Our Partners
Through our technical partner, EAII Advisors, Evidence Action supports the implementation of deworming and iron and folic acid supplementation in India in collaboration with government counterparts across 11 states, including their respective Department of Health, Department of Education, and Department of Woman and Child.
