Wife of Abia State Governor, Mrs Nkechi Ikpeazu, has flagged off statewide deworming exercise for school children, at Ndume Otuka Primary School, Umuahia North LGA, with a charge to parents and care givers to prioritize the health and wellbeing of Abia school children who have continued to make the state proud in national examinations.
The program which was jointly organized by Abia State Primary School Lunch Programme, APSLUP, the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) and Vicar Hope Foundation in collaboration with the Federal and State Ministries of Health, also featured the feeding of the school children after being dewormed.
Speaking during the event, Mrs Ikpeazu stated that Abia state has maintained first position in education performance ranking because of the efforts of the government to prioritize the mental and physical well being of the students as well as provide necessary infrastructure and retrain teachers to ensure that the students remain ahead of their peers. She informed that Abia school feeding program was launched more than a year before the federal government took up the feeding of primary 1-3 pupils while the state continues to feed nursery and primary 4-6 pupils.
She expressed appreciation to the more than 4,500 food vendors employed in the free school meal program and called on them to maintain the high standard that has made the state a model for other states.
According to her, “The deworming exercise will take place concurrently in all 17 LGAs of the state and we expect that the food given to the children will be much more beneficial when they are also rid of worms. Our target is to achieve a healthy mind in a healthy body as well as continue to improve school enrollment rate from its current 580,000”.
