School health programme soon in Kerala

[sajiv]

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A comprehensive school health programme will be launched by the Department of Health in association with Education Department shortly.

The programme will be in addition to an ongoing awareness drive aimed at warding off potentially fatal disease in children such as tuberculosis, polio, hepatitis-B, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and measles, which was started in schools recently.The details of the "exhaustive" health programme proposed to be started by the end of November would be revealed soon, said Dr. Dinesh Arora, Director, National Rural Health Mission. A brochure on the guidelines of the proposed campaign has already been distributed in schools.

Meanwhile, the ongoing awareness drive is being spearheaded by children, who play a major role in educating family and friends on the need for vaccination. The campaign also enlists the services of junior public health nurses, accredited social health activists and anganwadi workers. "The response to the campaign from the students is encouraging. We are expecting to cover over 90 per cent of the targeted population by the end of this year," said Dr. Arora.

It is estimated that there are nearly 12,000 accredited health activists and around 30,000 anganwadi workers involved in the campaign across the State. There is also participation from the public, local bodies and voluntary agencies. According to the officials of the Health Department, the number of the children in the State who fail to receive timely vaccination has increased of late. At the school level, the vaccination campaign is interspersed with magic shows, ventriloquism shows, distribution of newspaper clippings on vaccine-preventable diseases, workshops for the members of the media, messages on television channels and quiz, debate, poster writing and essay competitions. Besides all this, the class teachers in every school read out a vaccination-related message to the students every Wednesday.

All queries and feedback from students regarding the programme are to be submitted to the teachers who are in charge of the schools' health and science clubs. The last date for submitting the queries is October 25. The respective teachers are to respond to the queries after assembling the students inside the school auditoriums on October 31. A weekly report on the progress of the campaign is sent to the Health Department. The campaign also highlights the need to observe October as a month of disease prevention and awareness annually.