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Mumbai schools take school health check-ups very seriously.
Mumbai schools have upped the ante by providing specialised medical care in the school premises including inviting specialist Doctors on campus and facilitating parental interaction. Schools now boast of on-call doctors, full-time nurses and interactions with parents.
Gone are the days when a health check-up at school meant a chance to get away from classes for a while. City schools have upped the ante by providing specialised medical care in the school premises including inviting specialist Doctors on campus and facilitating parental interaction.
It has always been mandatory to conduct annual health check-ups in schools; however city schools are proactively providing specialised care around the year to students.
Schools now boast of on-call doctors, full-time nurses and interactions with parents about identified problems besides helping parents identify underlying problems. "We have a clinic on the campus with nurses. Besides, we have a tie-up with the hospital across the road. Health check-ups always help as they identify problems that we don't realise exist," said Seema Saini, principal, NL Dalmia School, Mira Road.
Podar Group of Schools have taken medical care one step further by incorporating mental health in the purview of care provided in school. The school has in place an in-house counsellor to ensure the behavioural and emotional well being of students and help early detection of learning disabilities. According to Swati Popat Vats, president, Podar Education Network, specialist health check-ups help identify the minutest problem at the physical as well as the mental level and helps in early correction so that the child’s performance is minimally affected. The schools have also explaining the importance of the appropriate amount of Vitamin D and B3 in the children’s diet.
Recently, Kohinoor International School, Kurla, undertook its annual medical check-up in an unusual but a parent-friendly way. It collaborated with the Indian Pediatric Network (IPN) to hold a comprehensive health check-up camp comprising of paediatricians, ophthalmologists, dentists and nutritionists. The camp was conducted on a weekend with prior appointments being handed out parents. Technology is harnessed to generate a comprehensive report of the entire check-up camp and the child’s information will be made available to the parent on a Smartphone application. Dr Atish Laddad from IPN said that the Network was trying to reach out to more than 100 Mumbai schools through its Healthy School Project.
Parents too have welcomed the change. Although we are very careful with our children’s health, specialised check-ups at school comes as a boon, especially where both the parents are working, said Arpan Gada, a mother of two.
(With inputs from Aleka Gheewala)
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