Posts filed under ‘education’
Antimalarials ‘give children an edge’ at school
Preventative malaria treatment could improve schoolchildren’s performance in endemic areas, a study suggests.
The research was presented at the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine’s conference in London, United Kingdom, last week (14 September).
Benson Estambale, director of the Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, investigated whether giving preventative antimalarial drugs to primary schoolchildren improved their educational performance.
More than 6000 students from 30 schools in the Bondo district of West Kenya were administered antimalarial drugs three times in 2005–2006.
“[Preventative treatment] is very much recommended for pregnant women and has been tried in infants and young children, but nothing had been done in children over five years of age,” Estambale said.
“We found that quite a number of people wanted to have their children treated for malaria, because they said that malaria was causing a lot of absenteeism in school and the children were coming home when they had fever.”
Treatment cut the students’ risk of malaria parasite infection by more than a third, as well as reducing anaemia. Researchers found that treated children performed better in cognitive tests and also did slightly better in school exams.
Previous studies of malaria-infected regions indicate that up to 50 per cent of all preventable absenteeism in schools is due to malaria, and the research team found that a number of people wanted to have their children treated for malaria because of absenteeism, Estambale told delegates.
Estembale said the Kenyan Ministry of Education had expressed interest in the study and the researchers hope it could lead to the introduction of routine preventative therapy for schoolchildren, as the government has done with de-worming.
“De-worming has become official policy in the country and school health programs are now de-worming the children twice in a year to remove all the intestinal worms that could impact negatively on children’s performance in schools,” Estambale said.
Nick White, head of tropical medicine at Mahidol University in Thailand and a WHO advisor, said the results were exciting but future research should further examine the exact relationship between drug efficacy and educational performance, and whether the findings applied in other malaria-affected regions.
Nick White, head of tropical medicine at Mahidol University in Thailand and a WHO advisor, said the results were exciting but future research should further examine the exact relationship between drug efficacy and educational performance, and whether the findings applied in other malaria-affected regions.
Further studies are planned for Kenya and Senegal, but Estambale also hopes to hear from other potential partners.
“We would like to get partnerships even in Asia as well as South America, because children are children, and we know that in malaria-endemic areas, although quite a number of them are semi-immune, they continue having malaria impacting negatively on educational performance,” he said.
Read this story on the Science and Development Network.
How to get more women in science, engineering and technology
Entrepreneurial women in science, engineering and technology in the East of England talk about what they think needs to happen to get more women in these industries.
This podcast is part of a series. You can listen to this episode, or read the transcript.
Innovative engineering
Entrepreneurial women in engineering in the East of England give business and careers advice.
This is part of a podcast series. You can listen to this episode or read the transcript.
Careers in science enterprise
Entrepreneurial women in science in the East of England give business and careers advice, ranging from higher education decisions to becoming a CEO.
This is part of a podcast series. You can listen to this episode, or read the transcript.
End of monopoly could mean better connectivity in west Africa
The Association of African Universities has called for African leaders to use the end of a monopoly on a submarine communications cable to provide cheaper Internet access for students.
The SAT-3 submarine communications cable — which runs from Europe down Africa’s west coast — is currently monopolised by a consortium of state-owned and private telecommunications providers in different countries, and pricing structures have been the subject of criticism.
That monopoly ends in June, which could open up internet access for west African nations.
Information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives in African universities are suffering due to expensive, slow and limited connectivity, says Akilagpa Sawyerr, the executive secretary of the Ghana-based Association of African Universities (AAU).
“In our universities you’ve got 18,000 students and 1,000 teachers using the same amount of bandwidth as an American household,” said Sawyerr at a conference on African development at the UK-based Open University last week (16–17 May).
“The more people that use it, the slower it works. And because of the monopoly pricing in Africa, that university will pay 50 times more per unit than the American household.”
Sawyerr says the association needs to persuade governments that ICT programmes will not work without connectivity and effective networks between universities.
Rather than looking at expensive satellite Internet services as a solution, west African universities should be accessing the SAT-3 cable, he says.
“The monopolies run out in June and it is very important that before our governments renew their licenses we persuade them that these companies could give away a portion of their lines at a discounted rate to us,” Sawyerr said.
“We need those who are making the choices at higher levels to realise that it would cost them quite little and make a difference.”
He said the AAU is keen to work with other African organisations to lobby governments to this end.
Read the whole story on the Science and Development Network.
