DOH-7 assures parents: Deworming pills are safe

CEBU, Philippines - The Department of Health in Central Visayas has assured that deworming pills distributed to children in the region were safe.

The assurance came after close to 400 students from public elementary schools in western and northern Mindanao were allegedly hospitalized because of stomach ache, vomiting, dizziness and diarrhea following the deworming activity last Wednesday.

Dr. Jonathan Neil Erasmo, chief of the DOH-7 Communicable Diseases Control Section, said they had given out deworming tablets to 464,000 school-aged children. Only 35 percent of the total 1,113,598 target was dewormed.

He said none of those who took the chewable pill, Albendazole, have complained. Albendazole is used to treat neurocysticercosis, an infection of the nervous system caused by pork tapeworms.

 He said taking the pill will enhance the person’s mental capability and increase hemoglobin level.

“Dapat ang parents di mahadlok kay we’re doing this for the past years,” he said.

 He, however, admitted that the pill has side effects like headache, discomfort, gastric pain, among others, but all of these are “tolerable.”

The five-day deworming activity which commenced Wednesday, Erasmo said, will also cater schoolchildren in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDA) and one private school in Barangay Mambaling, Cebu City. DOH has set July 9 as a National Deworming Day.

Through DOH’s “Oplan: Goodbye Bulate” program, the candy-flavored tablets cost only P1 each. In private clinics, anti-worm medicines could cost from P5 to P25 each. The tablets are also available in any local health centers.

 DOH conducts deworming twice a year, January and July, for public school students up to 12 years old. It has budget allocation of P49 million for the synchronized deworming activity.

 The National Deworming Day targets to deworm 16 million schoolchildren from Kinder to Grade 6 in 8,656 public elementary schools across the country.  (FREEMAN)