​​Ayush's story - the effectiveness of deworming.

Four year-old Ayush is a student at a Broadleaf school who was able to stay healthy and stay in the classroom this year thanks to a simple but powerful intervention: de-worming tablets.

Nearly half of kids in Darjeeling have suffered from intestinal parasites, contributing to rates of malnutrition that hover around 25%. Years ago a bad dose of medication made Ayush sick. Since then, his mother Saira had been understandably scared to give her son the drugs he needed. But after building a trusting relationship with Broadleaf School Health Activist and community member Satyam, Saira was willing to try again. 

Now Ayush is thriving with the help of regular de-worming and iron supplements.It takes less than ten dollars to de-worm a class of students in Darjeeling – and studies have shown that when children receive deworming tablets, school attendance improves by as much as 20 percent. That’s why New York Times columnist Nick Kristof praised the power of de-worming as a life-saving Christmas gift:

Deworm a child. Or a village of children! One-quarter of people worldwide have worms in their bellies, impairing their nutrition and often leaving them anemic. Children can be dewormed for about 50 cents each, and this leads them to miss less school and earn more as adults. Kids in the American South were dewormed 100 years ago by the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, leading to large gains in school enrollment and in literacy, and now we can easily and cheaply achieve the same gains worldwide.

Fighting malnutrition is just one way your support for Broadleaf unlocks human potential. By helping kids to practice hygiene, teaching classes on topics like nutrition and mental health, and making direct referrals to medical care, together we can keep students in the classroom and empower them to build brighter futures for their families.

In Broadleaf's holiday gift guide, you can contribute enough deworming medication to deworm all the students in our schools for an entire year. 

You can read the full NY Times piece here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/opinion/sunday/...