SOUTHERN PROVINCE

NYAMAGABE — About 450 Burundian children under fourteen years, living in Kigeme refugee camp last Friday received warm drugs.

The drugs were distributed by the Sustaining Partnerships to Enhance Rural Enterprise and Agribusiness Development (SPREAD). According to nurses at the camp, warms are among the common infection among the children.

The drugs included Combantrin syrup administered on a small spoon. Another close to 350 pupils in a nearby primary school also benefited from the drugs. The drug in syrup form is said to be an alternative to Vermintel for children.

Under the supervision of the school Director and the Director of Kigeme Health Center, all the 784 secondary students of Groupe Scolaire de Kigeme either chewed three Vermintel tablets or swallowed them with water.

"Many of the students have warms but they just live with them," Denis Butera, the Director of the school said. "It is also easy for children to contract warms from each other due to poor hygiene; because they live as a community," he added.

Uwineza Yacinthe, one of the students, said she sometimes has a rumbling and running stomach partly due to warms. "I am happy that I am going to receive these drugs. Warms were limiting my academic concentration," he said.

SPREAD is a USAID funded project that works from the National University of Rwanda to help Rwandan farmers improve the value of their products and support their partnerships with western dealers.

Research conducted by Spread in conjunction with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International last year, among coffee farmers in Huye and Nyamagabe districts, revealed that farmers suffered from warms as the major disease endangering their lives.

According to Emerita Mukayiranga, the project health coordinator, 90 per cent of the 2,000 people tested last year in five health centers in Nyamagabe District, were found with parasites like ascaris, ankylostomia, and oxyuris.

That’s why in January and February 2008, the project provided doses of Vermintel tablets for adults and Combantrin syrup for children; to save lives of coffee farmers in the two districts. The drugs were donated by Pfizer, an American Pharmaceutical Company.

"It is not easy to get drugs, there are some drugs that are not easy to buy even when people have government’s health insurance cards," Mukayiranga said.

She noted that treating warms among coffee farmers was a new strategy of developing coffee farming. All of the 2,000 coffee farmers who were tested for warms last year were given ant-parasitic drugs. And this year, she said, the project would embark on programmes of HIV/Aids counseling and testing, and reproductive health.

"If farmers are not healthy, something will be missing in the coffee industry," she said.

The Director of Kigeme Health Center, Augustin Niyitanga, said warms come second after respiratory diseases among the common infections in the area. He attributed the warms infection to poor hygiene. "Our people lack clean toilets for example," he said.

He noted that the Rwandan culture of greeting by shaking hands is also partly to blame for warms spread. Niyitanga lauded Spread for their support, saying the drugs are expensive for common man and rare in many health centers and pharmacies in the country. A dose of Vermintel -three tablets cost Frw2,500 while Combantrin syrup cost Frw5,400.

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