Healthcare Aid Initiatives that Need to be Taken by Schools Post Lockdown

The spread of Coronavirus across the world has raised the concern of healthcare up to a greater extent. Children tend to spend most of their time in schools and other childcare settings. Post lockdown, schools need to be careful about the health and safety of their students. In this article, Dr. Atish Laddad, Founder & Director at Docterz is providing the Healthcare aid initiatives that need to be taken by schools post lockdown.

The academies and educational institutes across the country hereafter tend to establish an exclusive perspective to expedite children and youngsters in cultivating an optimistic outlook on life and assist them in practising a healthy lifestyle. It is estimated that in kids and juveniles the global rate of morbidity urges that school-aged have exceptional requirements in matters of health upgrade, sickness prevention among them and acquiring of appropriate health care services even while the students are at school.

It is necessary to note that because of their developing immune systems, children are falling prey and are particularly sensitive to infections and contagious like cold, flu and cough while being in the school premises and they have probabilities of spreading these diseases to other students due to their inadequate hygiene habits and most importantly the school's dense population. Therefore, for most students suitable and excellent health services within the school premises is most important and a reachable point at the time of emergency during school hours. Considering these prime aspects in school and other educational institutes while concentrating on offering excellence in academics must be able to provide better healthcare service. The aim should be to offer school-age children with preventive, healing and supportive medical interventions.

The factors contributing to every child’s well-being while at school is of prime importance. Hence in present times school-based providers and authorities are inclined towards offering a superior and diverse range of child healthcare services to students. These suitable preventive steps are designed to draw a protection net around the students, thus guarding them against getting unwanted infections and ailments:

Establishing a holistic medical programme
It is an important step to establish a holistic medical program that schools need to take, with constructive medical programs it encourages and assists child healthcare within school premises. Hence assuring that the physical, mental, emotional, and psychological health of a child is fully taken care of. Having a medically-equipped casualty room within the school premises will aid in efficiently managing a broad range of medical maladies, like unexplained aches and pains to injuries and life-threatening conditions like cardiac arrests and burns and most importantly will benefit in early exposure of sicknesses. To oversee emergency cases, experienced paediatricians must pay visits to the school and they must have on-board a 24/7 helpline number in case of emergencies. These remedial platforms have to be designed in a method to arm schools, parents and teachers to offer the best healthcare to students, thus helping to improve the child’s health within the school premises.

Annual physical and mental health screening
School physicians have a very fundamental role to play in safeguarding the child’s mental and physical well-being. This can be achieved by routinely or yearly conducting adequate physical and cerebral health screening for school students. Considering the consequence of upholding good physical health of the child to avert being infected, schools must undertake timely physical screening of students which should encompass aspects like scoliosis evaluations, blood pressure readings, checking blood sugar levels, pulse rate, measurement of height and weight, testing for tuberculosis and even physical exams on full-body check-ups may be con­ducted. Considering the correlation between Vitamin D deficiency and the weakening of the immune system, schools must have onboard skilled health examiners to provide proper treatments to children who lack the same. Post lockdown once the schools reopen, it is all the more necessary for schools to control various extracellular pathogens from affecting student’s health. Post lockdown operations like mass testing and screening of the child's health status must be a part of the school’s safeguarding strategies. They must keep a track of high-risk students like those suffering from diabetes or heart ailments.

Along with prioritizing the physical health of students, equal importance needs to be placed on mental health too. Cognitive health examination has a crucial role to play in condensing barriers to learning, lessens bouts of anxiety in school-going kids, detects any prevalence of mental health symptoms in the primary stages, provides accurate diagnosis and helps to bring out an optimistic educational and behavioural outcome in students. Engaging in efforts to deliver mental health screenings in schools is an enormously vital preliminary step in the battle against emotional illness, and will result in the capability to recover the mental health care of students. Schools must adopt the mode of screening with infra-red thermometers at the school entrance. Defibrillator machines ideally should be there in every school and the school health data should be analysed and measures need to be incorporated to improve it.

Importance on having paediatricians inside school campuses post the epidemic
Once the schools reopen post the pandemic, the school officials should take all the necessary precautionary steps like getting on board a skilled paediatrician within the premises to perform an effective screening of all students and educators post resuming and must gauge the overall health of the school. In case any child falls ill even after the school resumes, they must be given treatment on priority to rule out any possibility of infections from spreading. The child healthcare provider must co-ordinate with parents of ill children and must guide them on what healthcare measures and medications they must follow while the child is at home. Once schools reopen, they can also conduct a workshop on the dangers associated with a pandemic where-in the paediatricians can address students about the risks and precautionary measures. They can also provide CPR training to higher standard students.

Exercising social distancing in schools post reopening
Physical distancing and other safeguards against transmission of viruses should remain in place for an extensive time period at schools even after stay-at-home orders are lifted as once schools reopen there is a high risk of students falling prey to infections post coming in contact with infected students. Hence to avoid this, schools must focus on condensing mass crowding even after the schools start. This can be done by minimizing the number of students attending school. The schools should incorporate a protocol by which only about a minimal percentage of pupils that is about 15 students can attend classes while others can undertake online classes via virtual media. This can be done on a rotational basis. Steps to reduce physical contact in schools among students who function in proximity include, reducing prayer meetings, mealtime, and recess, also kids must be allotted separate tables while they sit in class without letting them share tables. Once the kids go back home the entire school premises must be properly sanitized and disinfected. Students and teachers must be checked randomly every week to guard against the return of any virus.

Prioritizing hand hygiene in schools
The bearing of faulty hand hygiene habits is associated with augmented incidences of illness and school absences. As an answer to this, schools must undertake a comprehensive hand hygiene program right from the elementary level to high schools to reduce the spread of microorganisms and germs. These effective programs will help to strategize and broadcast proper handwashing techniques, thus strengthening proper personal hygiene. Even once the schools start functioning, they should undertake awareness programs on hand-washing, workshops to alleviate misconceptions about infections and viruses and must encompass the right protocols for food hygiene and sanitation and to manage children with fever in the current context.

Regular cleanliness through sanitation programs in schools
School sanitation and hygiene education are vital in safeguarding against infectious ailments. Hence as a part of the school's hygiene drive, the educational institutions must undertake constant cleanliness and hygiene programs in school premises to facilitate schools in implementing strategies to endorse sanitation in schools. Because chances of contracting infections are high during monsoons, the school must be equipped with an appropriate tool kit to curb monsoon illness. Rainy seasons are said to record a steady rise in body temperature, gastro problems and a surge in the number of dengue and malaria cases. Have an effective sanitization program within the school premises ensures improved behaviour through expedient practices connected to personal, water, food and public hygiene.

Adjoining the above-mentioned steps, schools should have on-board skilled nurses and physicians for screening and examination of students especially in times of emergencies. Schools/colleges are a potpourri of diseases as many children are working in closed spaces for long hours. Hence, they need to understand the essence of managing and controlling infections. The understandable point of attention to the student’s health and the comparative ease of access to the child during school hours is undoubtedly a noteworthy factor in the formation of school healthcare services.