BY SAMIE WAIKORI
Auki
PREPARATION is underway for the application of a MOU between MEHRD and MHMS on health environment for schools in the country.
In light of that, teachers from schools in the central region of Malaita will end a weeklong training today as they will go back and empower the schools with the knowledge.
National Health Promoting Schools Coordinator, Ms Fiona Laeta said the training is purposely to equip teachers with knowledge as they’ll become vocal persons to lead the health programme in their schools.
“So after the teachers will return from the training, the process is we expect them to set-up each health committees in their respective schools.
“The school committees will responsible to identify health pressing issues in their respective schools and develop action plan to work on them.
“The schools’ action plans will link with the provincial health committee as well as the provincial health promotions to look at issues under the action plan.
“From there they will set-up monitoring tools for each individual school and come up with plans to visits the schools after every six months to monitor the progress of the action plans,” she said.
Laeta said this is the process and if schools complete priority areas under their action plans they will move to other areas of health issues under the action.
She said in terms of resource, focus is not on donors, “we must look within our means on areas like parent’s contributions, school grants, wider community support, support from provinces and etc”.
Laeta said this will however come into play one of the main component of the health education programme which looks at community link.
She said the main idea behind the programme is to ensure healthy school environment for students and teachers.
“Within school environment it has students, teachers, classrooms and other areas that were very important to influence their health in a positive way.
“By doing that the environment must be healthy so that the students are healthy in their intake of knowledge,” Laeta said.
