Govt targets full health data coverage for primary & secondary schoolchildren by year-end

The government is aiming to have full health data coverage for all primary and secondary schoolchildren by the end of the year, President Dr Irfaan Ali revealed on Wednesday.

The initiative is being implemented by the Ministry of Health (MoH) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, with support from Mount Sinai. The aim of the programme is to ensure that the nation’s children are offered preventative care and opportunities for a healthy lifestyle through early detection of any health-related issues.

Under the programme, students benefit from comprehensive health checkups, comprising dental checks, vision screening, hearing exams, physical examination, growth and development monitoring, nutritional assessments, BMI, and mental health screening, with the permission of their parents/guardians.

If a child is found to have a health issue requiring further care, they are referred for additional medical assistance. The programme was launched in 2023 for nursery school students and has been expanded to include primary and secondary schools.

Speaking briefly about the initiative during the opening ceremony of the 70th Annual CARPHA Health Research Conference at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre in Guyana, President Ali noted that authorities were able to screen more than 80,000 pupils in the primary school system.

“Now we’re going to the secondary school system. So, by the end of this year, we should have full data on all of our children in the primary and secondary school system so we can better align our public health care policy. But that took time,” President Ali noted, emphasising the importance of building public trust in the rollout of this initiative.

“We did that in collaboration with the parents, the teachers, and the community. Consent forms were developed that had to be signed…We had to build trust. We had to create awareness. We had to let the parents and the children understand that this is part of the future,” he explained.

In this regard, he emphasised the importance of involving the religious community.

“We have to get our pastors, our imams, the pandits to include in their sermons, aspects of public health every time they speak to the congregation and then we have to integrate our public health into their congregation because this a captive audience that can allow us to drive change at a faster pace. We have to get into the churches, the temples, the mosques, the community centres, that is where public health matters, that is where structural changes can occur,” President Ali outlined.