The ministries of Education and Health have collaborated with the Mount Sinai Health System to provide 17 nursery school pupils from schools across the coastland with much-needed spectacles as part of the Comprehensive Child and Youth Health Programme, a Ministry of Education release stated last Tuesday.
The programme, it explained, is being implemented with the aim of providing better access to health services for children across the country and increasing the rates of early diagnoses of childhood and adolescent diseases.
The School Health Screening commenced in July 2023 with the Nursery Level 1 and according to the release, screening was done throughout the country by the health care workers at the primary care level. Following the screening exercise it was noted that seventeen nursery pupils needed spectacles. Two pupils in Region One, one pupil in Region Three, four pupils in Region Four, three in Region Five, six in Region Six and one in Region Ten.
The spectacles were handed over to the pupils in the presence of their parents, Education Officers along with representatives from the Ministry of Health and Mount Sinai at the Ministry of Education, Brickdam, Georgetown.
Senior Education Officer in the Nursery Department, Abeeda Ali, in her brief remarks stated that the screening programme will ensure that each child will be given the relevant resources they need for their overall success and not just academically.
Meanwhile, Dr Farah December from the Ministry of Health’s School Health Unit stated that the initiative was designed to bring services to pupils in their communities.
And Country Director for Mount Sinai, Josué Alcántara-Marte, said that Mount Sinai understands that healthy children will grow into healthy adults and as such, school health is an important component of guaranteeing healthy children and thus a healthy population, the release added.
