Deworming in pre-school age children: A global empirical analysis of health outcomes

Nathan C Lo, Jedidiah Snyder, David G Addiss, Sam Heft-Neal, Jason R Andrews and Eran Bendavid

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2018, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-13

Abstract: Background: There is debate over the effectiveness of deworming children against soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH) to improve health outcomes, and current evidence may be limited in study design and generalizability. However, programmatic deworming continues throughout low and middle-income countries. Methodology and principal findings: We performed an empirical evaluation of the relationship between deworming in pre-school age children (ages 1–4 years) within the previous 6 months, as proxy-reported by the mother, and health outcomes of weight, height, and hemoglobin. We used nationally representative cross-sectional data from 45 countries using the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) during the period 2005–2016. We used logistic regression with coarsened exact matching, fixed effects for survey and year, and person-level covariates. We included data on 325,115 children in 45 STH-endemic countries from 66 DHS surveys. Globally in STH-endemic countries, children who received deworming treatment were less likely to be stunted (1.2 percentage point decline from mean of 36%; 95% CI [-1.9, -0.5%]; p

Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pntd00:0006500

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0006500

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