Malaria is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in early childhood, yet its consequences for health and education during the school-age years remain poorly understood. We examined the effect of intermittent preventive treatment (IPT) in reducing anaemia and improving classroom attention and educational achievement in semi-immune schoolchildren in an area of high perennial transmission. A stratified, cluster-randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of IPT was done in 30 primary schools in western Kenya. Schools were randomly assigned to treatment (sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine in combination with amodiaquine or dual placebo) by use of a computer-generated list. Children aged 5-18 years received three treatments at 4-month intervals (IPT n=3535, placebo n=3223). The primary endpoint was the prevalence of anaemia, defined as a haemoglobin concentration below 110 g/L. This outcome was assessed through cross-sectional surveys 12 months post-intervention. Analysis was by both intention to treat, excluding children with missing data, and per protocol. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00142246. 2604 children in the IPT group and 2302 in the placebo group were included in the intention-to-treat analysis of the primary outcome; the main reason for exclusion was loss to follow-up. Prevalence of anaemia at 12 months averaged 6.3% in the IPT group and 12.6% in the placebo group (adjusted risk ratio 0.52, 95% CI 0.29-0.93; p=0.028). Significant improvements were also seen in two of the class-based tests of sustained attention, with a mean increase in code transmission test score of 6.05 (95% CI 2.83-9.27; p=0.0007) and counting sounds test score of 1.80 (0.19-3.41; p=0.03), compared with controls. No effect was shown for inattentive or hyperactive-compulsive behaviours or on educational achievement. The per-protocol analysis yielded similar results. 23 serious adverse events were reported within 28 days of any treatment (19 in the IPT group and four in the placebo group); the main side-effects were problems of balance, dizziness, feeling faint, nausea, and/or vomiting shortly after treatment. IPT of malaria improves the health and cognitive ability of semi-immune schoolchildren. Effective malaria interventions could be a valuable addition to school health programmes.

Education has a potentially important role to play in tackling the spread of HIV, but is there evidence that this potential is realized? This analysis combines the results of previous literature reviews and updates them with the findings of recent randomized controlled trials and a discussion of possible mechanisms for the effect of schooling on vulnerability to HIV infection. There is a growing body of evidence that keeping girls in school reduces their risk of contracting HIV. The relationship between educational attainment and HIV has changed over time, with educational attainment now more likely to be associated with a lower risk of HIV infection than earlier in the epidemic. Educational attainment cannot, however, be isolated from other socioeconomic factors as the cause of HIV risk reduction. The findings of this analysis suggest that the equitable expansion of primary and secondary schooling for girls in southern Africa will help reduce their vulnerability to HIV. Evidence of ineffective HIV prevention education in schools underlines the need for careful evidence-based programme design. Despite the challenges, recent provisional evidence suggests that highly targeted programmes promoting realistic options for young adults may lead to safer sexual behaviour. Targeted education programmes have also been successful in changing students' attitudes to people living with HIV and AIDS, which is associated with testing and treatment decisions. This reduction in stigma may be crucial in encouraging the uptake of voluntary counselling and testing, a central strategy in the control of the epidemic. Expansions of carefully designed and evaluated school-based HIV prevention programmes can help to reduce stigma and have the potential to promote safe sexual behaviour.

Objectives. We measured the psychosocial effect of orphanhood in a sub-Saharan African population and evaluated a new framework for understanding the causes and consequences of psychosocial distress among orphans and other vulnerable children. Methods. The framework was evaluated using data from 5321 children aged 12 to 17 years who were interviewed in a 2004 national survey in Zimbabwe. We constructed a measure of psychosocial distress using principle components analysis. We used regression analyses to obtain standardized parameter estimates of psychosocial distress and odds ratios of early sexual activity. Results. Orphans had more psychosocial distress than did nonorphans. For both genders, paternal, maternal, and double orphans exhibited more-severe distress than did nonorphaned, nonvulnerable children. Orphanhood remained associated with psychosocial distress after we controlled for differences in more-proximate determinants. Maternal and paternal orphans were significantly more likely than were nonorphaned, nonvulnerable children to have engaged in sexual activity. These differences were reduced after we controlled for psychosocial distress. Conclusions. Orphaned adolescents in Zimbabwe suffer greater psychosocial distress than do nonorphaned, nonvulnerable children, which may lead to increased likelihood of early onset of sexual intercourse and HIV infection. The effect of strategies to provide psychosocial support should be evaluated scientifically.

Improving the health of school-aged children can yield substantial benefits for cognitive development and educational achievement. However, there is limited experimental evidence of the benefits of alternative school-based malaria interventions or how the impacts of interventions vary according to intensity of malaria transmission. We investigated the effect of intermittent screening and treatment (IST) for malaria on the health and education of school children in an area of low to moderate malaria transmission. A cluster randomised trial was implemented with 5,233 children in 101 government primary schools on the south coast of Kenya in 2010–2012. The intervention was delivered to children randomly selected from classes 1 and 5 who were followed up for 24 months. Once a school term, children were screened by public health workers using malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs), and children (with or without malaria symptoms) found to be RDT-positive were treated with a six dose regimen of artemether-lumefantrine (AL). Given the nature of the intervention, the trial was not blinded. The primary outcomes were anaemia and sustained attention. Secondary outcomes were malaria parasitaemia and educational achievement. Data were analysed on an intention-to-treat basis. During the intervention period, an average of 88.3% children in intervention schools were screened at each round, of whom 17.5% were RDT-positive. 80.3% of children in the control and 80.2% in the intervention group were followed-up at 24 months. No impact of the malaria IST intervention was observed for prevalence of anaemia at either 12 or 24 months (adjusted risk ratio [Adj.RR]: 1.03, 95% CI 0.93–1.13, p = 0.621 and Adj.RR: 1.00, 95% CI 0.90–1.11, p = 0.953) respectively, or on prevalence of P. falciparum infection or scores of classroom attention. No effect of IST was observed on educational achievement in the older class, but an apparent negative effect was seen on spelling scores in the younger class at 9 and 24 months and on arithmetic scores at 24 months. In this setting in Kenya, IST as implemented in this study is not effective in improving the health or education of school children. Possible reasons for the absence of an impact are the marked geographical heterogeneity in transmission, the rapid rate of reinfection following AL treatment, the variable reliability of RDTs, and the relative contribution of malaria to the aetiology of anaemia in this setting. www.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00878007 Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary Every year, more than 200 million cases of malaria occur worldwide and more than 600,000 people, mostly children living in sub-Saharan Africa, die from this mosquito-borne parasitic infection. Malaria can be prevented by controlling the night-biting mosquitoes that transmit Plasmodium parasites and by sleeping under insecticide-treated nets to avoid mosquito bites. Infection with malaria parasites causes recurring flu-like symptoms and needs to be treated promptly with antimalarial drugs to prevent the development of anaemia (a reduction in red blood cell numbers) and potentially fatal damage to the brain and other organs. Treatment also reduces malaria transmission. In 1998, the World Health Organization and several other international bodies established the Roll Back Malaria Partnership to provide a coordinated global approach to fighting malaria. In 2008, the Partnership launched its Global Malaria Action Plan, which aims to control malaria to reduce the current burden, to eliminate malaria over time country by country, and, ultimately, to eradicate malaria. In recent years, many malaria-endemic countries (countries where malaria is always present) have implemented successful malaria control programs and reduced malaria transmission levels. In these countries, immunity to malaria is now acquired more slowly than in the past, the burden of clinical malaria is shifting from very young children to older children, and infection rates with malaria parasites are now highest among school-aged children. Chronic untreated Plasmodium infection, even when it does not cause symptoms, can negatively affect children's health, cognitive development (the acquisition of thinking skills), and educational achievement. However, little is known about how school-based malaria interventions affect the health of children or their educational outcomes. In this cluster randomized trial, the researchers investigate the effect of intermittent screening and treatment (IST) of malaria on the health and education of school children in a rural area of southern Kenya with low-to-moderate malaria transmission. Cluster randomized trials compare the outcomes of groups (“clusters”) of people randomly assigned to receive alternative interventions. IST of malaria involves periodical screening of individuals for Plasmodium infection followed by treatment of everyone who is infected, including people without symptoms, with antimalarial drugs. The researchers enrolled more than 5,000 children aged between 5 and 20 years from 101 government primary schools in Kenya into their 24-month study. Half the schools were randomly selected to receive the IST intervention (screening once a school term for infection with a malaria parasite with a rapid diagnostic test [RDT] and treatment of all RDT-positive children, with or without malaria symptoms, with six doses of artemether-lumefantrine), which was delivered to randomly selected children from classes 1 and 5 (which contained younger and older children, respectively). During the study, 17.5% of the children in the intervention schools were RDT-positive at screening on average. The prevalences of anaemia and parasitemia (the proportion of children with anaemia and the proportion who were RDT-positive, respectively) were similar in the intervention and control groups at the 12-month and 24-month follow-up and there was no difference between the two groups in classroom attention scores at the 9-month and 24-month follow-up. The IST intervention also had no effect on educational achievement in the older class but, unexpectedly, appeared to have a negative effect on spelling and arithmetic scores in the younger class. These findings indicate that, in this setting in Kenya, IST as implemented in this study provided no health or education benefits to school children. The finding that the educational achievement of younger children was lower in the intervention group than in the control group may be a chance finding or may indicate that apprehension about the finger prick needed to take blood for the RDT had a negative effect on the performance of younger children during educational tests. The researchers suggest that their failure to demonstrate that the school-based IST intervention they tested had any long-lasting health or education benefits may be because, in a low-to-moderate malaria transmission setting, most of the children screened did not require treatment and those who did lived in focal high transmission regions, where rapid re-infection occurred between screening rounds. Importantly, however, these findings suggest that school screening using RDT could be an efficient way to identify transmission hotspots in communities that should be targeted for malaria control interventions. Please access these websites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001594.

Substantial resources are invested in psychological support for children orphaned or otherwise made vulnerable in the context of HIV/AIDS (OVC). However, there is still only limited scientific evidence for greater psychological distress amongst orphans and even less evidence for the effectiveness of current support strategies. Furthermore, programmes that address established mechanisms through which orphanhood can lead to greater psychological distress should be more effective. We use quantitative and qualitative data from Eastern Zimbabwe to measure the effects of orphanhood on psychological distress and to test mechanisms for greater distress amongst orphans suggested in a recently published theoretical framework. Orphans were found to suffer greater psychological distress than non-orphans (sex- and age-adjusted co-efficient: 0.15; 95% CI 0.03-0.26; P=0.013). Effects of orphanhood contributing to their increased levels of distress included trauma, being out-of-school, being cared for by a non-parent, inadequate care, child labour, physical abuse, and stigma and discrimination. Increased mobility and separation from siblings did not contribute to greater psychological distress in this study. Over 40% of orphaned children in the sample lived in households receiving external assistance. However, receipt of assistance was not associated with reduced psychological distress. These findings and the ideas put forward by children and caregivers in the focus group discussions suggest that community-based programmes that aim to improve caregiver selection, increase support for caregivers, and provide training in parenting responsibilities and skills might help to reduce psychological distress. These programmes should be under-pinned by further efforts to reduce poverty, increase school attendance and support out-of-school youth.