Kenya : Do Infants Benefit When Older Siblings are Dewormed?
Early childhood is a crucial window of opportunity for improving lives. The challenge for policymakers and development experts knows which programs give children’s development the best boost and how to implement them. The World Bank is committed to...
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Format: | Brief |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
Washington, DC
2015
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Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/08/24969111/infants-benefit-older-siblings-dewormed http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23340 |
Summary: | Early childhood is a crucial window of
opportunity for improving lives. The challenge for
policymakers and development experts knows which programs
give children’s development the best boost and how to
implement them. The World Bank is committed to helping
governments understand whether programs to improve lives are
succeeding. Rigorous impact evaluations are often carried
out to provide the evidence of impact. In Kenya, a World
Bank researcher went back after a decade to measure the
impact of a deworming campaign on young children whose older
siblings and neighbors had received the deworming
medication. The evaluation indicates that having fewer worms
in their communities gave these younger children a boost,
most likely because they faced lower risk of infection
during a vital period of development. The results are a
reminder of the importance of following up on development
programs to measure long-term impacts that can show lasting
improvements in the lives of millions. Currently, deworming
in Kenya has been scaled up nationwide, giving primary
school age children better health and, as this evaluation
shows, the chance for cognitive improvement for the youngest
family members too. |
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