Evaluation of some aspects of school health services in Babylon province, 2015

Abstract EN

Background: “The children of today are the adults of tomorrow , thus, proper school health services are crucial for promoting the health of our school children and achieving the learning goals.

Objective: To evaluate the performance of some primary health care centers regarding the implementation of some aspects of school health services.

Methodology: A cross sectional study included six primary health care centers which were randomly selected, four from the center of Babylon province (urban) and two from the periphery (rural) .

The other part of the study also involved six primary schools, each primary school is related to one of the above mentioned primary health care centres .

All pupils of the first grade in schools have been screened .

The period of study extended from the beginning of March through May, 2015 .

A structured questionnaire was used to collect information :- demographic characteristics in addition to measurements of children's body mass index to assess the nutritional status , examination of errors of refraction and the assessment of speech disorders.

Medical records of primary health care centers related to first grade primary school pupils were reviewed to verify the findings of medical staff in their medical records .

Results: This study showed that there were significant differences p < 0.05 between the proportion of cases detected by this study which was high compared to the data reported by school health records in the primary health care centers .The number of assessed pupils in this study was statistically higher significantly than that found in school health records p= 0.01 .The prevalences of the following health.

The health problems detected in the screening process were (3.6%) , (7.3%) , (12.4%) for refractive errors , speech disorders and obesity respectively .One physically handicapped child was identified in this study that was not reported in the school health team records.

Conclusions: School health services provided to our elementary school children were neither complete nor adequate , the study recommended the need for urgent action to improve the school health services.