The Government of Ghana is to host the 9th African School Health and Nutrition (SHN) Course where representatives from ministries of health, education, agriculture, gender and social development, SHN experts, civil society and academics representing 13 African countries will gather for ten days this week to focus on best practice in SHN interventions.

The course, which runs from June 10 - 20 is co-organised by Partnership for Child Development, West African Centre for International Parasite Control (WACIPAC) of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, and Eastern and Southern Africa Centre of International Parasitic Control (ESACIPAC).

Dr. Irene Ayi, Head of WACIPAC and the WACIPAC’s Department of Parasitology said, “The SHN Short Course has over the years grown from strength to strength, providing an opportunity for ideas and experience exchange among policy and programme managers involved in school health and school feeding interventions from the various countries in attendance. Such interventions have been shown to improve the health and academic performance of school-age children”.

Impact of School Health and Nutrition Interventions

Current perspectives on effective education reinforce that quality education is achieved through not only the provision of quality teachers, curriculum and materials but by supporting children’s health and wellbeing to be ‘fit to learn’.

A growing body of evidence also highlights the long-term and far-reaching negative consequences of poor health outcomes for school-age children on the broader education system, achievements later in life, and national and regional economies.

Comprehensive SHN programmes address challenges which negatively impact on child health, and such interventions include HIV/AIDS prevention, malaria and parasitic worm treatment, control and prevention, and nutritional deficiencies such as iron-deficient anemia and short-term hunger through school feeding.

Course Focus

Throughout the short course, participants attend hands-on planning workshops and hear from experts in their fields deliver lectures exploring SHN themes, particular focus will also be paid to the theme of Nutrition in the School-Age Child and Adolescents.

Opening the course a keynote panel including Sir Roy Anderson, Director of the London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Research and Professor Donald Bundy, Lead Health and Education Specialist at the World Bank will discuss current SHN perspectives on child health and infectious disease and school feeding.

The Local Context

The course, which is held in Elmina, Ghana also gives participants the opportunity to learn from the Ghanaian context and the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP), particularly on the eighth day of the course where attendees will participate in school and teacher training college visits.

Appropriately designed school feeding programmes such as the GSFP have been shown to increase access to education and learning, and improve children’s health and nutrition, especially when integrated into comprehensive school health and nutrition programmes.

The GSFP, supported by PCD, sources school meals from local farmers and integrates components including deworming children from parasitic worms, ration design for nutritious school meals and assessing child behavioural change. At the same time the GSFP which sources school meals from local farmers provides them with a regular and reliable income by investing in the use of locally-produced food for school feeding.

Short Course Links

Read more about the Africa Short Course 2013 

Read more about the Africa Short Course 2012 

News Coverage of the Course

Download Course Presentations 

More news coverage from the course

The Lancet will be publishing a major new Series which examines the current and expected extent of maternal and child under-nutrition and obesity, and the interventions that are appropriate for low- and middle-income countries.

Authored by the Maternal and Child Nutrition Study Group – a renowned set of global health and development academics and practitioners – the Series consists of four papers and a Call to Action commentary from the authors.

The Series will appear ahead of the “Nutrition for Growth: Beating hunger through business and science” pre-G8 meeting, convened by the Brazilian and UK governments and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.

Paper Presentation Launch

To launch the papers a symposium presentation of the papers, followed by a panel discussion led by Dr Richard Horton, Editor of The Lancet, will be held on Thursday, June 6 at Imperial College London.

Additional launch events will be hosted by local partners in Washington, DC, Ethiopia, India, and several other countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Event Speakers

Speakers at the paper presentation taking place at Imperial College London will include: Ferew Lemma, Senior Advisor, Officer of the Minister, Ministry of Health, Ethiopia, Robert Black, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Marie Ruel, International Food Policy Research Institute and Anna Taylor, Senior Nutrition Advisor, UK Department for International Development.

For the full agenda Click here.

Event Time & Location

Dubai Cares recently announced the launch of its three-year integrated Home Grown School Feeding pilot programme in Ethiopia, which is being implemented in 30 schools to address the school health and nutrition (SHN) needs of approximately 30,700 primary school age children in the Southern Nations and Nationalities Peoples' Region (SNNPR).

"Dubai Cares has launched this three-year programme to contribute to the evidence base and facilitate informed decision-making and scale-up not only in Ethiopia but also in other countries across the world."said Tariq Al Gurg, Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Cares at the press conference of the programme launch held in Ethiopia.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), 66 million primary school-age children attend classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone.

The $(US)4 million Dubai Cares funded pilot programme in Ethiopia is based on a contemporary, cost-effective, nationally-owned and sustainable school health and nutrition model, which aims to enhance primary school enrolment rates, reduce absenteeism and improve the learning abilities of the children in the region.

An Integrated Programme

The pilot is being carried out through a partnership formed by the World Food Programme, Partnership for Child Development, SNV-Netherlands and the Ethiopia Health and Nutrition Research Institute and through this collaboration various aspects have been contributed to the programme.

In addition to in-school meals prepared from locally sourced commodities, components of Deworming treatment and Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) in schools have been included.

Iain Gardiner, East Africa Regional Coordinator for PCD, said, "The Dubai Cares funded HGSF programme is a leading example of how different stakeholders can effectively pool their expertise to make a real impact on the health, education and wealth of farming communities in Ethiopia."

Over 600 million school-age children worldwide are infected with parasitic worms which severely affects child health and learning abilities, improving access to safe water, adequate sanitation, and proper hygiene education also reduces illness and death from disease.

Mr Gardiner added, "As part of the programme, researchers will be conducting one of the largest school health monitoring surveys ever undertaken within Ethiopia. Using this new evidence base, we will be able to ensure that interventions are targeted to where they are most needed."

Useful Links

Read more on HGSF

Read more on Deworming

Read more on WASH

Related Articles on the Launch

• In 1993 PCD provided input into the 1st edition of Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries.  
• In 1997 PCD published Better Health, Nutrition and Education for the School-Aged Child.
• In 2001 PCD and partners developed the Ed-SIDA model which is now routinely used to analyse the global impact of HIV and AIDS on the education system.  
• In 2002 the Accelerate Initiative was launched by the Working Group of the UNAIDS Inter-Agency Task Team on Education which PCD was a member of.
• In 2005 the annual training course, Strengthening Contemporary School Health, Nutrition & HIV Prevention Programmes, was held for the first time by PCD with partner support in Kenya.
• In 2008 PCD began supporting research into the concept of self-refraction through adjustable spectacles.
• In 2011 17 million children of school age were treated for parasitic worms by the Government of Bihar with technical assistance provided from PCD and Deworm the world.
• In 2012 the training course, Strengthening Contemporary School Health and Nutrition and HIV Prevention Programmes in Southeast Asia, was held for the first time in Bangkok, Thailand.
• In 2012 PCD became a founding member of the London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research and a founding member of the UK Coalition against Neglected Tropical Diseases.  

The Impact of Poor Health on Education

For children across the world especially in low income countries, poor health negatively impacts on education.

Using the school based platform to improve child health

School Health & Nutrition (SHN) programmes are increasingly being recognised as a way to increase primary education enrollment, retention and are an effective way to improve child health reaching children on a grand scale. 

Some Effective School Health & Nutrition Interventions

Primary school teachers from six regions of Cameroon have also begun acquainting themselves with the education and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS in schools.

• Read the original article from CRTV, National Deworming Campaign Launched.
• Read more on the importance of Deworming in Schools.
• Read more on HIV Education.

Authors of a recently published paper evaluating a five-year trial of Deworming and Enhanced Vitamin A supplementation (DEVTA) in one million pre-school children in Uttar Pradesh, India have argued for funders to "invest and invest heavily" in such studies.

The DEVTA trial, originally carried out seven years ago, was larger than all other vitamin A trials combined and shows that pre-school vitamin A supplementation, assumed to reduce child mortality by a quarter and intestinal deworming, and assumed to improve child nutrition, growth, and cognitive development has been shown to have no significant effect on child mortality.

Conclusions are drawn in the paper that although DEVTA didn't show a big difference to child mortality rates, funders shouldn't shy away from funding trials of this scale.

One such institution, the London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Research, which was opened on January 30 this year, aims to address these and other research needs to strengthen the evidence-base around effective NTD control programmes.

Research carried out by the Centre will serve to provide demand driven technical advice and support to countries looking to develop and implement deworming programmes.

Conclusions in the paper are made, "As an international community of scientists participating in policy, we must ensure that this trial...ensure(s) the best use of finite resources to contribute to the health of children in developing countries."

Inexpensive school-based deworming treatment improves health and school attendance in the short term and improves productivity in the long term.

From 1998 - 2001 a series of studies evaluating the Primary School Deworming Project (PSDP), a school-based deworming programme which was carried out in Western Kenya showed that deworming treatment is not only highly effective and inexpensive, and that it is easy to administer through public schools, and brings benefits to children years after treatment.

(Fig 2 from J-PAL Policy Bulletin, Deworming - A Best Buy for Development, March 2012)

The studies showed that in the schools where deworming was carried out:

• Attendance rates also increased. A decade later, children who had been infants when the deworming programme started in their community showed cognitive gains, equivalent to 0.5 - 0.8 years of schooling.

Original summary of results and details on the PSDP can be found in the Bulletin, Deworming - A Best Buy for Development from J-PAL Poverty Action Lab.

The impact on children 

Researcher Dr Isaac Bogoch, who specialises in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Toronto General Hospital said: "The (iPhone) microscope was very good at diagnosing children with heavier infection intensities as there are more eggs, so they are easier to see...These parasitic infections cause malnutrition, stunted growth, and stunted mental development".

Using the iPhone

Dr Bogoch, told the BBC he had read about smartphone microscopes being trialled in a laboratory and decided to, "recreate it in a real world setting...The technology is out there. We want to use materials that are affordable and easy to procure."

They were studied for the presence of eggs, the main sign of the presence of the parasites. When the results were double-checked with a laboratory light microscope, the device had managed to pick up 70% of the samples with infections present - and 90% of the heavier infections.

[Image credit: Issac Bogoch]

40 participants attended the course, including representatives of: World Food Programme, Save the Children, GIZ and Global Partnership for Education.

Director of the London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research Prof. Sir Roy Anderson opened the event last week and keynote speeches were made by Laos Vice-ministers of Education & Health.

Key topics of the course have included parasite control (deworming) and human resource management (teacher training).The course is due to end tomorrow, which will see delegates present country school health action plans to conclude the course.

Read the original article from the Vientiane Times. 

Read more about the 2013 Southeast Asia Course.

Presentations

Chaired by the Centre’s Deputy Directors, Dr Lesley Drake and Professor Simon Brooker, presentations were also given on the night covering the following topics:

• The Launch of the London Centre - Aims and Objectives
• Guiding Control - Spatial Epidemiology of NTDs
• Schistosomiasis Elimination - Challenges and Opportunities
• How school based deworming programmes impact on community wide transmission of soil transmitted helminths

About the Centre

The centre is a joint initiative of Imperial College London, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)and the Natural History Museum (NHM).

Predicted STH infections in Nigeria. Map courtesy of www.thiswormyworld.org

Further resources

News coverage on the launch

Vanguard: Nigeria takes a stand against Neglected Tropical Diseases

Today is World Day of Social Justice, a day which was first observed in 2007 and supports efforts of the international community to work towards: poverty eradication, gender equity and access to social well-being and justice for all. 

School health and nutrition programmes are amongst the most cost effective interventions that exist to improve both children’s education and health. According to the World Bank, they can add four to six points to IQ levels, 10% to participation in schooling, and one to two years of education.

About Patrice Engle

Patrice L. Engle, Ph.D. (1944-2012) was a pioneer and leader in global early child development who launched a highly productive career to ensure that children throughout the world received the health care, nutrition, nurturance, and early learning opportunities they needed to be successful.

The best legacy to Pat is to ensure that junior scholars are well trained in the science-to-policy model that guided her work in global early child development.

3rd December saw the celebration of International Day of Persons with Disabilities, themed, Removing barriers to create an inclusive and accessible education for all. Over one billion people, or approximately 15% of the world’s population, live with some form of disability. Persons with disabilities, “the world’s largest minority”, often face barriers to participation in all aspects of society.

The impact of disability on children in low and middle income countries

In low and middle income countries disabled children are three times more like to be denied healthcare and children with disabilities are less likely to start or stay in school than other children.

The most common and powerful barriers for children with disabilities gaining access to education include: stigma, discrimination, inaccessible transport, unprepared classrooms and teachers.

Despite a robust disability rights movement and a shift towards inclusion in low and middle income countries, people with disabilities remain second-class citizens. Misunderstanding and fear of persons with disabilities result in their marginalization within the family, community, at school, and in the wider society.

Evidence and experience shows that when barriers to their inclusion are removed and persons with disabilities are empowered to participate fully in societal life, their entire community benefits.

For countries to achieve Education for All and to meet the Millennium Development Goal of universal completion of primary education, access to education must cater for all children including those with disabilities.

Taking Action

From the day's theme, sub-themes can be selected to cover all aspects of society and development.

Take Action: A major focus of the Day is practical action that would help to remove barriers that limit accessibility for and participation by persons with disabilities in all aspects of society and development. Highlight progress and obstacles in creating accessible and inclusive education, including in terms of physical environments, information and communications technology and other areas, as well as promote public awareness of existing barriers to the full inclusion of children with disabilities in their societies.

Useful links

• Including children with disabilities: challenges and responses in school health and nutrition programmes
• Prince Harry visits Rio "Everybody's School" supported by the Partnership for Child Development

Resources

• Global Report on Disability
• Promoting Quality Education for Orphans and Vulnerable Children
• Vision and hearing screening in schools

The Permanent Secretary of the Kenyan Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, Mark Bor, also welcomed the commitment which he said, "not only helps infected children, but also strengthens our public health care system. That is because untreated patients often suffer from serious health consequences which cause a great deal of unnecessary suffering and lead to high costs."

Schistosomiasis - the second-most prevalent tropical disease

Schistosomiasis is the second-most prevalent tropical disease in Africa after malaria. It is estimated that more than 200 million people are infected and that around 200,000 die from it in Africa each year.

The chronic, parasitic disease is transmitted by flatworms and is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions where poor populations have no access to clean water and sanitary installations.

Read more news coverage on the donation programme:

• Dr Lesley Drake - Executive Director of PCD
• Professor Sir Roy Anderson - Director of the London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research
• Professor Donald Bundy - Lead Specialist in School Health and Nutrition, World Bank 
• Peter Hotez - President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute  
• Dr Dirk Engels - Coordinator of the Preventive Chemotherapy & Transmission Control, World Health Organization.

• World Bank article World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim Opening Remarks at Neglected Tropical Diseases Conference, Washington DC
• Huffington Post article Big problems? Think big solutions

The need for PSS to be person-centred was noted. PSS should take a holistic approach and ensure active participation of patients in their own care. PSS should result in a person living with HIV feeling happy, reassured, to have an understanding of HIV terminology and above all be hopeful for the future.

Topics covered throughout the day included: facilitating resilience of HIV-affected children and youth through social environments; psychological support and child protection training; and delivering high quality care in sub-Saharan Africa.

Further reading

• Hope and Happiness: The Success of Psychosocial Support (the Consortium's article on the day event) 
• A full report of the topics covered in depth from the day    
• Find a suggested reading list on PSS and related documents from the UK Consortium 

And access Schools & Health Document Downloads on HIV

The initial health screening of the programme carried out by the Union health ministry will target children aged six-18 years in 1,100,000 government-run schools across a total of 15 states.

The School Health Programmes (SHP) will undertake biannual health service provision through screening, healthcare and referral to look for anaemia and assess the nutritional status of children, in addition to testing their visual acuity and hearing skills.

Dental check-up, common skin diseases, heart defects, physical disabilities, learning disorders and behavioural problems will also be among the programmes' priority.

Read the Forum Communiqué

Find Presentations from the forum for: Day 1, Day 2 and Day 4. (With Day 3 being the field trip).  

Read the various press articles on the pilot project and GCNF: 

Merkato, Ethiopia Launches School Feeding Program

The Reporter, Gov't Looks to School Feeding to Support Agricultural Dev't 

All Africa, Ethiopia: Farmers to Supplant Imported Food for School Lunches

The Current Situation

Education First was launched on the margins of the 67th Session of the UN General Assembly. Participants included Heads of State and Ministers from countries, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, heads of UN agencies, young people, civil society representatives and a number of Chief Executive of the private sector

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Helen Keller International and the Kon Tum provincial departments of Health and Education and Training, the pediatric eye health care project also trained nearly 300 teachers and health workers from 100 primary and secondary schools on screening skills.

Each school was equipped with a screening toolkit, and the trained teachers checked their students for refractive errors at the beginning of a new school year.

“We are very happy with the results of this project and hope that the best practices adopted by Kon Tum Province will be considered by other provinces,” said USAID/Vietnam Mission Director Francis Donovan.

Through screening and specialized check-up for those in need, 13 school children have been diagnosed with complicated eye diseases such as cataract, uveitis, posterior capsule pacification and ptosis and referred to Ho Chi Minh Eye Hospital for additional treatment and care.

“This project is very significant to Kon Tum province as it has helped students improve their vision and also improved the awareness of children, teachers and parents about eye health,” said Dr. Nguyen Thi Ven, Director of Kon Tum Health Department.

In addition to improving the vision of school children, the project has strengthened the capacity of provincial health personnel in pediatric ophthalmology and provided surgical equipment to Kon Tum General Hospital and Kon Tum Center for Social Disease Prevention and Control in order for them to provide follow-up care for more complicated cases.

Read more on the Impact of Child Vision on Child Development.

Read the original press release from Helen Keller International.

Find out more about Helen Keller International.

District Medical and Health Officer, K.Sudhakara Babu told a press conference that for the first time, children in private schools would be covered under the exercise, which will be jointly undertaken by both departments of health and education, with support given from Rajiv Vidya Mission, an organisation in the district working towards community ownership of the school system.

Over 600 million school-age children in the world are infected with parasitic worms. School-age children typically have the highest burden of worm infection of any age group with an estimated 400 million worldwide suffering from soil-transmitted helminths and schistosomiasis.

Chronic worm infections are widespread. They can negatively affect all aspects of a child's development: their health, nutrition, cognitive development, learning and educational access and achievement.

The Minister of Local Government and Rural Affairs, together with development partners, launched a new GHS 6.8 million Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme which will improve the health, education and nutrition of over 320,000 school-age children in Ghana and the communities in which they live.

The four year programme funded by Dubai Cares will see the Partnership for Child Development, Imperial College London supporting the Government of Ghana in its efforts to improve the nutritional intake of children living in poverty and food insecurity through the provision of healthy school meals.

The new programme builds on the ongoing success of the Ghanaian Government’s School Feeding Programme which already feeds over a million children every school day.

Children who are fed at school have higher attendance rates, suffer less from absenteeism and are more likely to concentrate whilst they are at school. There are few greater impediments to an education than an empty belly.

However, just filling children up is not enough. To protect them from malnutrition, anemia, and infection, programmes need to ensure they are feeding children healthy nutritious food, containing the necessary micronutrients and vitamins - they need to make sure that children are not infected with parasitic worms and to make sure that parents understand what the nutritional needs are in order to ensure that their children grow to be strong and healthy.

The new initiative looks to meet these needs by focusing on three main areas:

• An education campaign targeting parents on the importance of education and nutrition for school children and their families.

• A complimentary deworming programme which will ensure that it is the child being fed not the worms.

Speaking at the launch Dr Lesley Drake, Executive Director, Partnership for Child Development said, "This generous support from Dubai Cares to Ghana will make a real difference to the health, nutrition and education of school aged children and the communities in which they live. The Ghana School Feeding Programme provides an excellent example of good practice and this funding will undoubtedly strengthen the platform for sustainable Home Grown School Feeding Programmes across the continent, benefitting millions of children and farmers. Today is a good day for school-age children and for smallholder farmers."

Tariq Al Gur, Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Cares also commented, "This programme will not only benefit school children, but marginal rural communities as well since the commodities required for producing the nutritious meals for school children will be procured from local farmers. This creates a self-sustaining cycle in which students receive the nutrition they need and household incomes increase.”

The Ghanaian School Feeding Programme (GSFP) will also focus on ensuring the programme’s sustainability by improving in-country management capacity and promoting cost effective delivery systems that can result in increased programme efficiency for the long term. This combination of effective delivery and increased capacity will enable the programme to be further scaled up in the future.

The programme was officially launched by the Hon. Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo Minister for Local Government and Rural Affairs, Mr Tariq Al Gurg, Chief Executive of Dubai Cares and Dr Lesley Drake, the Partnership for Child Development to an audience of representatives from Ghanaian Ministries of Health, Education and Agriculture and representatives from the development community.

As part of the launch representatives of participant organisations visited local farms and schools to speak to the farmers, children and the wider communities who will be benefiting from this new programme.

Read more on Home Grown School Feeding

Read more press articles on the Dubai Cares launch for continued support of HGSF in Ghana:  

• Albawaba: Dubai Cares launches HGSF program in Ghana reaching over 400,000 beneficiaries
• Trade Arabia: Dubai Cares' Ghana drive to benefit 400,000
• Gulf News: Dubai Cares Programme to help 320,000 Children in Ghana
• Emirates 24/7: Dubai Cares Ghana Initiative to help 400,000
• The Gulf Today: Dubai initiative to help 400,000 in Ghana  

Please note registration for this year’s course closes on Friday, 11th May 2012.

For further information and/or submission of registration please see:

If you have any queries about the course or how to register for the 2012 course, please contact:

Ms. Alexis Palfreyman - Programme Manager for Networks & Training

Partnership for Child Development (PCD) Imperial College London, London, W2 1PG, UK

Email: a.palfreyman@imperial.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)20 759 42755 / Fax: +44 (0)20 7262 7912

In its World Malaria Report 2011 the World Health Organization noted that although progress had been made towards malaria eradication, there was still a resurgence in three African countries.

Whether the Malaria map shrinks or is reclaimed by Malaria parasites very much depends on the resources invested in control efforts over the next few years.

The Malaria Control in Schools toolkit aims to enable education professionals to develop effective programmes on the prevention and control of malaria for school-age children within malaria endemic countries.

For further information visit the Malaria Page. Find Country Programmes on Malaria, articles in the Malaria Bibliography & Document Downloads.  

Visit the website of the Malaria Consortium for more in-depth information.

• Jamie Cooper-Hohn, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Children's Investment Fund Foundation, United Kingdom
• John Dutton, Deputy Head, Forum of Young Global Leaders, World Economic Forum, Switzerland
• Raila Amolo Odinga, Prime Minister of Kenya
• Sriram Raghavan, Chief Executive Officer, InKlude Labs, India; Young Global Leader
• Rajiv J. Shah, Administrator, US Agency for International Development (USAID), USA; Young Global Leader.