School Health Partners review screening and deworming interventions

By D. I. Laary, GNA
Accra, Dec. 21, GNA - Stakeholders implementing global initiative, School Health Integrated Programming (SHIP), assembled on Tuesday to assess eye screening and deworming interventions launched in the Denkyembour District in the Eastern Region.

The meeting would afford players the opportunity to assess how the integrated school health approach has fared in the district in improving child health, document best practices and identify gaps in the implementation process for better decision making.

Mrs Getrude Ananse-Baiden, Country Programmes' Manager of Partnership for Child Development (PCD), said the initiative is being piloted in the Denkyembour District due to the area's high level of parasitic worm infections.

The global programme is being carried out with the help of the World Bank, Imperial College London's PCD and Sightsavers with funding support from the Global Partnership for Education.

The programme supports governments in Ghana, Cambodia, Senegal and Ethiopia to build and put together their school health plans and activities. ?

Mrs Ananse-Baiden said 120 head teachers and school based health coordinators of the Ghana Education Service have been trained and 12,052 school children in 60 public schools in the district have been dewormed.

She said 10,099 persons were screened for their eyes and out of the number, 68 school children and 92 teachers were given eye glasses.

She also said 3,956 children were been screened for intellectual disability and 4,753 for hearing impairment.

Mrs Ananse-Baiden said 'there is no coordination in school health interventions' and called for greater collaboration to ensure comprehensive health programming for children health - many of who are in school.

She said it is important to increase health education in schools to improve hygiene and sanitation.

'There is the need to encourage children to avoid playing in dirty areas and contaminated water'', she said and expressed worry that teacher and parent apathy challenged the implementation of the initiative.

Mrs Gertrude Mensah, Eastern Regional Director of Education, lauded the role of the interventions saying we have been able to identify more gaps in the school health sector in the district for special attention.

'Some children and particularly, teachers, did not know that they have some disability, and didn't seek interventions, the initiative has helped to identify more of such children, I am so happy that teachers were also identified,' she said.

It is expected that owing to the achievements, the SHIP would be scaled up to other districts.

Health officials say intestinal parasites have been around and common among children and are not going away, but people can control them with a proper deworming schedule.

The school health integrated programming national capacity building workshop was on the theme: 'Collaborating school health interventions for better outcome.'

GNA