Re: Intestinal worms in Vietnam: info needed

[Judy Ladinsky <jlladins@facstaff.wisc.edu>]

At 04:50 AM 4/4/97 -0600, you wrote:
>Dear friends,
>
>2 billions people in the world are affected by intestinal worms.
>In children, the worms worsen malnutrition (suy dinh du+o+~ng)
>(in severe cases, they cause thie^'u ma'u. They also cause lack of sleep :))
>and thereby possibly affecting physical and mental growth. Treatments
>to kill the worms are cheap but they have to be applied repeatedly because 
>re-infection rates are high. Also, with the infection rates prevalent in the 
>developing world, it is cheaper and more convenient to give the treatment to
>all the children than to test for worms before giving the treatment.  
>  
>The Child Development Institute in the UK is running a programme
>to treat intestinal worms in children in some schools in Vietnam.
>The schools give the treatment at regular intervals to all the students.
>However, at the moment there is no measure of the benefit, and without
>evidence of benfits it can be hard to persuade more schools to participate.
>By coincidence, a few days after I asked Peto for help for Vietnam, the CDI
>also asked him to help. His initial idea is to do a randomized trial:
>pick some schools at random and give the treatment, pick some at random
>and give placebo, then compare physical growth and mental achievement
>for the two groups. 
>
>Do you know of anything that can readily be used as a measure of mental 
>achievement for school children in Vietnam? What national/nationally 
>standardized tests are there? What are the tests and exams in Vietnam?
>
>Huy
Dear Huy
   Mental Achievement is now being tested in Vietnam by the Dept of Neurology
  at Bach Mai Hospital.  It has been translated into Vietnamese and is being
used
  also at the province level.  They are using the Denver Development test
for children
    If you have further questions let me know
      Judy Ladinsky
      USCFSCWVN>