Health authorities in the country have launched a campaign to provide practical ideas for everyone to help children return to school safely in the times of COVID-19.
The ‘Back to School Campaign’ aims at promoting the efforts to control the spread of COVID-19.
Messages and tips for students, teachers and parents are distributed in video and poster formats to schools across the country.
Also a social media campaign has been launched together by the Ministry of Public Health, Hamad medical Corporation and Primary Heath Care Corporation on the implementation of precautionary measures in schools to ensure the safe return of students.
The campaign includes a collection of resources for schools to support them in building greater health and well-being throughout the 2021 to 2022 academic year, said Community Medicine Consultant and Head of the School Health Department at PHCC Dr Layla Al Dahnaim, in a video message posted on social media.
As school doors reopen in the country with blended learning, measures like hand washing stations, physical distancing, mask wearing and temperature checks are being integrated into school life.
According to Dr Al Dahnaim, it is everyone’s responsibility to commit and ensure precautionary and preventive measures at schools to guarantee a safe environment for students.
She said that the campaign will be initially for three weeks and it targets all public schools and kindergartens in the country and focuses on students and school staff, in addition to parents. However it will be continued throughout the academic year.
“To enhance efforts to combat COVID-19 with the start of the new academic year, the School Health Department has launched back to school campaign in all public schools under the theme – A safe return to school challenging COVID-19,” said Dr Al Dahnaim.
She said that the campaign will highlight the most important precautionary measures necessary to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 and also create awareness about the most common communicable and contagious diseases among students including chickenpox, influenza, hand, foot and mouth infection and scabies.
In order to ensure a healthy and safe school environment, school health protocol on precautionary measures for health and safety during the pandemic in public schools was updated. The protocol includes all precautionary and preventive measures and a comprehensive checklists that help the school team to follow up.
“To begin the new academic year we have prepared a protocol for school health as a comprehensive guide for preventive and precautionary measures that should be implemented at schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Health awareness and maintaining the implementation of precautionary measures at schools are major roles of school health nursing,” said Ayman Alshory, School Health Supervisor at PHCC.
“We would like to emphasise the role of parents in preparing their children to return to school by ensuring early bed time, maintaining healthy diet, educating children about the importance of COVID-19 preventive measures and visiting the health centre when you feel sick,” he added in a video message.