Tag Archives: mebendazole

What a Difference a Year Makes

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By: William Lin, Director Corporate Contributions, Johnson & Johnson

What a difference a year makes. A year ago this month, Johnson & Johnson made a commitment to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals supporting maternal and child health. Part of the commitment was to expand the Company’s donation of mebendazole, a drug that treats children infected with intestinal worms.

More than 600 million school-age children are infected with intestinal worms, or soil transmitted helminthes (STH). They live in some of the poorest tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world.

Since last year’s announcement, our program partner, Children Without Worms (CWW) has been working hard to reach more children with this expanded commitment. This builds on our work over the last six years in eight countries and this year, we added Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Yemen.

In addition to making donations to new countries, we have also expanded our donations in countries that have demonstrated efficient and effective deworming programs that have not yet achieved national coverage. For instance, in Bangladesh where STH affects as many as 92 percent of school-age children in parts of the country, we’ve scaled up and will reach children in almost of half of the country’s districts with high disease prevalence. Starting in 2012, we plan to double the donation to Bangladesh allowing the government to put more than 10 million children on the road to better health. This year, with additions of new countries and expansions to existing countries, we have more than doubled our mebendazole donation from 36 million doses in 2010 to 80 million doses, reaching twice as many children. Continue reading →

Shoes Save Lives

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Reprinted with permission from Toms Shoes:

By: Kim Koporc, Director, Children Without Worms (CWW)

It seems silly but when you think about it, people spend a lot of time deciding what shoes to wear. But for the millions of children living in the developing world, having access to just one pair of shoes can be life changing. Today people across the United States are participating in TOMS Shoes’ One Day Without Shoes – to raise awareness about the number of kids that do not have shoes and the challenges they face.

Not having shoes can be the difference between being sick and well.  Shoes are the buffer between one’s skin and the ground.  The ground is often dirty and can contain fecal matter in communities that lack access to proper sanitation. Shoes keep children free of infections.

Soil transmitted helminthes (STH) are prevalent in some of the poorest communities in the world.  Worms thrive in these areas where the climate is often warm and humid.  Hookworm, one of the three types of STHs, spreads when larvae penetrate the skin – often through bare feet because their families lack the resources to buy shoes. Continue reading →

GSK Announces Expansion of Albendazole Donation

Global Development, Global Health, NTDs, Public Health, , , , , , ,

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced today at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) launch of the first report on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) that they will partake in a five-year commitment to expand the donation of its medicine albendazole to treat children at risk of intestinal worms, known as soil-transmitted helminths (STH).

The new WHO report states that STH infections are more detrimental than any other infection among school-aged children, causing cognitive and developmental issues, physical stunting, and missed school days. These infections are transmitted by use of unsanitary water.

To treat and control STH infections, the WHO recommends annual school-wide deworming, where children between 1-15 years of age receive a single dose of albendazole (or mebendazole), in regions where such infections are high.

Under the new commitment announced today, 400 million treatments of albendazole per year will be provided in addition to the previously committed supply to the WHO with 600 million tablets of albendazole per year for use in the Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filiariasis (GAELF). This donation will support the UN’s strategy to improve women’s and children’s health and, when combined with existing de-worming programmes, will enable the countries to scale-up their efforts to achieve universal coverage of school age children in Africa. Shipments of the new donations are expected to start in late 2011.

6th meeting of the Mebendazole Advisory Committee (MAC)

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This weeks marks the 6th meeting of the Mebendazole Advisory Committee (MAC), an independent group comprised of experts with a variety of science and health backgrounds. MAC is the advisory group for Children Without Worms (CWW), an organization working to reduce the burden of soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections, which occurs amongst the poorest children living in tropical and subtropical nations. Children Without Worms has partnered with Johnson & Johnson and The Task Force for Global Health (formerly the Task Force for Child Survival and Development), both of whom have generously donated the drug Mebendazole, a treatment for worm infestations.

Approximately 20 percent of the world is either infected or at risk for STH infections. Children between the ages of 5 and 15 years old suffer the most, and make up one-third of the global STH burden. Children with chronic infections are at increased risk for physical and mental impairments, which can lead to learning disabilities and poor school performance. Children can also be affected before they are even born – infected  pregnant women are at high risk for low birth-weight babies and poor milk production. Additionally, their infants have higher rates of malnutrition and mortality. Furthermore, pregnant women who develop anemia while infected are three and a half times more likely to die in childbirth.

Photo Courtesy of http://www.who.int/wormcontrol/statistics/useful_info/en/index2.html

The most effective prevention methods for controlling chronic STH transmission include both proper sanitation management efforts and educational campaigns aimed at the use of latrines. As previously mentioned, two drugs are available to treat active STH infection, Albendazole and Mebendazole.

In 2001, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution to eliminate STH as a public health problem by regularly treating 75 percent of at risk children by 2010. Unfortunately, less than 20 percent of this population was reached with deworming treatment in 2005. This pressing global health issue must be addressed now and we need your help. To see how you can help control STH transmission, please visit the Global Network’s and CWW’s websites. Together we can control these infections, and assist in providing a better life for the bottom billion!