Health Promotion in School (Monday, 21th Feb, 2011)

Early in the morning,...... among the darkness of my room,....... a soft music start playing..........

scary???........

No, that's my alarm.

I grope in the darkness for my alarm, turn it of; Cautiously made my way to look for the switch, which is my source of light.Wash myself clean, eat, get dressed, and of i go.................

I hit the road bout 6.15, got to travel to Padang Terap, which is 1 1/2 hrs away from SP.

I manage to reach on time...."phew......"

Our mission today????? Observe the health promotion in school.

It's held in a school next to the district health office. when we reach there, the teacher is still giving the students a briefing on pay attention and taking notes. The students attending are made up of randomly picked students from each grade. Unlike the usual situation, where the DHO officer pick a particular class among the whole school.

The School Hall

 We went in the hall and observe. Students are positioned like exam time, few rows made up of students, each assign to a place with a desk and chair. How nice, I thought they'll need to sit on the floor. Anyway, the DHO officer in charge start talking soon after we arrive. He distributed a booklet to each student, where they are to fill in their particulars, and answer the questions in it. It will be collect back later for analysis, to find out the students health status, (physically, mentally, and emotionally). The officer guided them trough-out the process of filling in the booklet. In between, he gives them advise and healthy lifestyle, how to exercise, how to handle the teen years. 

There was a break in between the health promotion. We went up and had a chat with the officer. He told us various ways of primary health care, what they usually do, and what are the activities for the students later. After the break, the talk continues, we watch the process of the health campaign. Among them were students talking, not paying attention to the speaker, especially the those sitting at the back. There were two saperate counters set up behind the crowd, one for height and weight measurement; the other for BP  measurement.

Counter for Weight and Height Measurement

We notice that the teachers took the opportunity to measure their BP and also BMI. So, it looks like it's not just health promotion to the students, but it also bring awareness to the teachers on their health status. Reaping double benefit, i will say, it's a good way to reach out to adults also, especially in todays time when most of them are tied down by work, family, commitments......(well, you add on to the list)

BP Measuring Counter

After the briefing, the students were sent out for a little exercise. They are to jog a distance of roughly 4km. As expected, when making a whole group of students to jog, there will be some of them just walking leisurely, speed up only upon instructed by teachers. After the jog that looks more like a walk, students gather in the hall again, this time for they are to go to both the counters set up to take the measurements. Finally, after the long day, it ended, and we head back to SP.