Featured Review: Treating school children with drugs to kill soil - transmitted worms

In 2015 Cochrane published a review on this topic, which has now been updated to include six new trials, additional data from included trials, and addresses comments and criticisms.Global Advocacy organisations claim routine deworming of all school children at regular intervals with deworming drugs in areas where helminth infection is common has substantive health and societal effects beyond the removal of worms.This interview with David Taylor Robinson, Professor of Public Health and Policy, Honorary Consultant in Child Public Health at The University of Liverpool, tells us a little more about this review.What is deworming and why is it important?Soil-transmitted worms, including roundworms, hookworms, and whipworms, are common in tropical and subtropical areas, and particularly affect children living in poverty where there is inadequate sanitation. The World Health Organization (WHO) currently recommends that school children in many areas are regularly treated with drugs which kill these worms. Some advocates claim such programmes improve child growth, haemoglobin, cognition, school attendance, school performance, physical fitness, and survival.What is the history of this Cochrane Review?A summary is given here in this Cochrane editorial which gives some of the background to this debated area.   Advocates believe strongly in population wide treatment programmes but the Cochrane review finds quite substantial evidence of no benefit in terms of haemoglobin, cognition, school...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news