Deworming your child – Necessary?
Aug 15th, 2005 by Lilian
This topic was brought up for discussion in our parenting forum.
I replied as follows:
My paediatrician has told me that children who grew up in the urban areas do not need de-worming. Only children who run around barefoot on soil infested with animal droppings and those areas with no proper sewage system.
I then tried searching for ‘deworming’ and was amused that it only brings up sites about deworming animals like horses. After I key in ‘deworming children’, I find that only the under developed countries still practice this.
However, I understand that many parents are still bombarded with this issue because the older folks like the grandparents still subscribe to this idea.
If a child bite the nails, not eating well, eating too much but not gaining weight and etc, the grandparents will tell the parents that the child has worms. Each child has to be assess individually for their problems and not pointed to just one theory of ‘sure infested with worms.’
Therefore, parents – do not give your child deworming medicines unless recommended by your doctor. (which I doubt they will)
This is the problem that I am having now. My child is eating a lot of stuff (including junk food) but not gaining weight and I’m being told that she is infested by worms… I have not given any deworming medicine. I thought it must be because she was sick (cold) and is still recovering.
[...] We were having serious parenting discussion whether it is necessary to de-worm our children and I had blogged some facts about them. But there are gross stuffs that cannot appear at either place – the forum nor the parenting blog. The Fear Factor kind. [...]
then you have the case of a hungry/curious baby (14mths) who will put everything into her mouth – baby will dig dig into the floor where there is dirt and promptly put into her mouth. I couldnt actually keep an eye on her all the time and hence, inevitably she ends up eating dirt.
In the philippines, we give mass deworming to school children. Although a permit slip is required from every parent, still, we (nurses) feel that it is necessary to give this drug before initiating food for school program
it is necessary yes because of all the krap that is in the soils and also in our foods. my personal opinion is rather deworm than to find little worms coming out of places you really dont want them to come out from.