• Home

School health top priority, says minister

"The ministry has, under the directives of Shaikh Zayed, been paying great attention to school health programme and activities as one of its top priorities," said Mr Midfa while chairing a meeting on Sunday organised by the Central School Health Depatment (CSHD) and attended by the MoH under-secretaries, assistant under-secretaries and directors of school health depatments from other emirates.

Mr Midfa said that the programmes and activities planned by the ministry, in coordination with the educational zones for school health for the academic year 2003-2004, will concentrate on providing distinct and comprehensive services for school children, which aim at promoting school curative services.

The minister also highlighted the significance of including private schools in these programmes, particularly the programmes of free-of-charge vaccination and school environment supervision for schoolchildren.

Private schools which accommodate 280,000 students would have the concern of the ministry, said the minister. He also lauded the efforts exerted by officials at the MoH and the Ministry of Education and Youth (MoEY) in upgrading the standard of school health services, pointing out to the importance of 'School Health Friendly Schools' project which will be implemented during the current academic year.

The minister also ordered allocation of a draft budget for monitoring the performance of the school health at the educational zones in the country.

Briefing the Press on the details of the meeting, Dr Mahmoud Fekri, Assistant Under-Secretary for Preventive Medicine, said the meeting also discussed the annual plan chalked out by the (CSHD) for the current academic year on comprehensive medical check-up, prevention of communicable diseases, vaccination programmes, oral and dental health and the medical services provided at private schools.

He said the meeting also discussed the three-year training programme prepared by the CSHD to train school health providers on principles of first aide. The training course will be conducted at 90 per cent of the government schools, said Dr Fekri.

The CSHD will also provide school children during the current academic year with comprehensive early detection programme for certain diseases.

The training will also focus on conducting in-depth studies about the causes of reported skipping classes cases, he said. Dr Fekri also revealed that CSHD would introduce tetanus-diphtheria vaccination (T.D.) programme at the secondary level. School health services, he said, for the current academic year, would cover 732 government schools and 448 private schools accommodating around 600,000 students.

• UAE