About 490,514 of the second batch of the Free School High School (SHS) will benefit from a free medical screening to ensure good health among the students whilst they embark on studies on campus.
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) would jointly do this with the Ghana Education Service (GES).
These came out at the end of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which the two institutions signed in Accra on Friday.
Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Director-General of GHS said, it is geared towards realising the Universal Health Goal.
Students, he said, would be taken through Eye, X-ray, BP, Physical Education (PE) screening and educated on nutrition that would develop their system for their course.
Dr Nsiah-Asare said, the maiden of the exercise, conducted in 2017 nationwide, had about 300,000 of students screened at the various SHS.
He said the initiative would help strengthen school health, revealing that later, they would push for a policy on keeping a database of the students and follow their health history throughout their lives.
This would help in disease control and surveillance in the Country, in general, the Director General added.
He noted that the programme had become necessary because apart from the prisons, schools were also concentrated, making it necessary to screen them and those found sick treated before putting them together as well as manage those with special cases.
After the exercise, students would be aligned with health facilities within the communities the schools operate in order for them to be properly taken care off with support from their sickbays in case any of them fell sick, he explained.
Dr Nsiah-Asare said, aside that, health promotion would be done in conjunction with the Environmental Health Officers to ensure proper sanitation on campus and a competition would be opened to ensure the cleanest school.
The Director General for Health hinted that the exercise would be extended to the Pre-school level, where children from the Kindergarten would have their eyes and ears screened and vaccinated against communicable and non-communicable diseases.
He suggested that in as much as education was made compulsory to all, health should also be made compulsory, especially on the part of the students where they would be required to get Active Child Health Insurance Cards.
Dr Nsiah-Asare signed on behalf of the GHS whereas Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, the Director General for GES signed for his outfit.
Source: GNA
