Organization background
Children International (CI) has been working in various districts of West Bengal, India, since 1981. CI programs reached out to several tens of thousands of underprivileged children with the goal of enabling them to become "healthy, educated and self-reliant" adults. They have a local agency "Sahay", and also work with UNICEF as well as several NGO's and governmental agencies in India.

Project background
Poor sanitation and waste disposal are significant problems in the impoverished communities where CI works. In many of these communities, parasites are a major threat to health of the families CI supports. Of the sponsored children and youth population (the sponsored refers to children and families that are helped financially by sponsors whom CI solicits from across the globe), 50% have a latrine facility, but 35% share a community latrine and 12% still utilize the open field. In addition, of the total sponsored population 34% share access to water through a community faucet, 51% have a private water pump. 18% have access to a community well. Less than 1% of families have water facility at home or a private well at home. School aged children are at the highest risk for parasite infection, which can lead to malnutrition, including anemia, which has implications for school performance, susceptibility to other illnesses, and increased morbidity and mortality related to co-morbidities. A recent parasite study indicates 12.96% of children ages nine and ten are infected with soil-transmitted helminthes (parasites).

Project description
CI will conduct an anti-parasite campaign among areas of their sponsored population with a high prevalence of common soil transmitted helminthes - Trichuris trichiura, Ascaris lumbricoides, and Hookworm. In areas with low parasite prevalence, treatment will be managed on a selective case-by-case basis in CI medical clinics. For high prevalence areas, sponsored children and their siblings are given blanketed treatment with the anti-parasite medicine Albendazole to stop the transmission of the parasite. This distribution begins just after the end of the rainy season, when the prevalence of parasite infection is typically higher. To prevent these parasites from continuing to affect sponsored children, youth, and their family members, agencies implement health education activities to address general parasite prevention, share methods for improving water and sanitation, and discuss practical ways to promote good hygiene practices. The project objective is to decrease the incidence of helminthes infection rates from 1,103 to 700 cases among the 26,541 sponsored children (11 years and below). GKF will pick up part of the cost of this project.

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