Thursday, September 04, 2008 Students get help against worms
WHEN Reymart Dasig, 11, of Alaska Elementary School suffered from gastrointestinal worms a year ago, he hoped that it would never happen to him again.
“Mosakit pirme akong tiyan (My stomach hurt all the time),” said Reymart, who used to walk around the community barefoot.
After yesterday’s health fair and “Worm Day” sponsored by the Southeast Asian Service Leadership Network (SEALNet), Reymart finally learned how to avoid catching intestinal worms.
“I learned how to keep myself clean, like how to clean my hands and how important it is to cut my nails. What I learned here I will follow in order not to catch any worms,”
said Reymart.
For the foreign university students and young professionals of SEALNet, addressing the gastrointestinal worm problem among children in the Philippines was the priority.
“Seven out of 10 children these days have gastrointestinal worms. It’s a big issue here in the Philippines,” said Andy Moon, SEALNet’s project mentor.
The Cebu City Medical team visited the Alaska Elementary school last week and dewormed the children, said principal Carmen Chan. What they learned shocked them.
“When our school nurse checked up on the children, we discovered that 100 percent of grades one to four students had intestinal worms,” said Chan.
SEALNet developed a curriculum on worm control for the school and other communities to adopt.
“We are hoping that our design will teach the students the prevention of gastrointestinal worms. In the future, we hope that it will be replicated in other communities,” explained Moon.
As the children spent the day playing educational games in different booths, they were awarded with stickers that would allow them to claim prizes at the end of their adventure.
The volunteers came from different universities of the United States and Europe. Among them were students from Harvard University, Stanford University and Oxford. EPB
