Health Screening Among Primary School Children

Proverb says 'prevention is better than cure'. There are 3 levels of prevention; primary i.e. before the disease occurs, secondary i.e. at early stage with early symptoms, and tertiary i.e. to treat the disease and rehabilitation.

In public health setting, school health program is one of the major program to detect early abnormalities in the children such as physical development abnormalities and to recheck of the immunization received by them.

The district health school team only consists of nurses due to lack of doctors. The nurses will visit all the school to check the students vision and also give immunization if needed and some simple medication such shampoo for lice. The doctor will go later to do a physical examination. All the examination will be recorded in a book.


The record book (Student Health Record).


The nurse with students.

During my posting at Bachok District, I've visited some schools to do physical examination on students which could not be done earlier. Students screened are Year 1 (7 years old) and Year 6 (12 years old). Physical examination is done in a classroom and the examination include auscultation of heart and lungs, skin and limbs examination and ears examination. Special attention also given if students have their specific complaints. Dental team will do the dental and oral part.


Dr Shahril of KK Bachok examines a student.


Checking the ear.

I found a student with Achondroplasia Dwarfism who has short statue, abnormal small hands and round legs. It is a good time to see children running and mingling each other in the same uniform although they might come from the different social economy status which could be recognized by their appearances when you see them closer.


Achondroplastic child on the left (I just noticed both have same color of socks!).

To maintain and sustain their health are our responsibilities!

Health Education

Talking about public health, one of the important (or the most important) aspect is prevention. And for prevention, one of the important (or the most important) aspect is health education... I repeat ... health education.

For this purpose, every year, the District Health Office in collaboration with the District Education Office will arrange a series of health talk as a mean of health education to school children, especially for the year 6 pupils after their UPSR or Primary School Assessment Test.


The audience....

I was very fortunate to be given opportunity to give a talk to these school children on 21 Oct 09 at Sek Keb Keting, Bachok together with 2 PPKPs (Penolong Pegawai Kesihatan Persekitaran or Assistant Environmental Health Officer), En Azman and En Azmail. The topics given were Smoking, HIV/AIDS and Influenza A (H1N1).


En Azman speaks on smoking and HIV/AIDS

You can imagine how difficult to talk about health to school children, especially on HIV/AIDS when we have to talk about sexual contact etc. The talk on this topic was given by En Azman, and I noticed he only touched on the topic briefly... (he talked on Smoking and HIV/AIDS in merely 30 mins!).


The headmaster and his assistant.

Came to my part, I spoke on H1N1 for about 1 hour including quiz time.... Difficult to control children from making noise. However, from the quiz, at least we know whether the message conveyed or not to the audience. For me, if they know how the disease is spreading and how to curb it, it is more than enough.


Token of appreciation from the headmaster.