Day 1: Back to School!

We were then given a talk on the School Health Programme in Sik District by Jururawat Kesihatan Zainab Warib- and she explained on the district health office's role in maintaining the health of school children, in particular focus today of secondary school children.

The School Health Unit falls under the Matron’s purview of duties and consists of 2 Staff Nurses, 2 Community Nurses, 1 Sister, 1 Medical Assitant and 1 driver. The unit aims to give optimum health services to the schools here (9 secondary schools, 22 primary schools, 33 kindergartens, 17 PASTIs and a PDK). Their activities include immunizations, simple treatment for the common skin diseases and coughs and colds, offering referrals to Sik Hospital as well as the Visual Acuity Test for early intervention. They are also involved in the Doktor Muda Programme and PROSTAR.

We were extremely lucky as the sister then invited us to follow her and her team to administer the HPV vaccinations for the Form 1 students in Sekolah Menengah Agama Sik, a fully residential school.

We followed the sister and her team to the school, which was just about a 5 minute drive from the health office. It's quite a large school, with the infrastructure up-to-date and complete.

The school has 2 “bilik sakit”s - where health related procedures are carried out- and it has informative posters regarding dengue, skin disease and other common problems on the wall to provide information to the children.

The sister then briefed us on how they go about administering the vaccines- importantly, the consent form MUST be signed by the guardian, or else, they do not give the vaccines.

The type used is 'Cervarix', which costs about RM 75 per dosage, and its given for Form 1 and Form 2 female students, who have to complete the 3 dosages at 0,1 and 6 months.


The nurses take extra precautions as well, by making sure the students rest for about 5-10 minutes, to make sure the vaccine does not cause them to suffer any harmful side effects.

A brief interview session was also conducted with the teacher in-charge: Pn Faizah Ibrahim.
According to her, the major health issues in the school were skin diseases (scabies, rashes and so forth) as well as URTIs.

As such, the school is planning to invite health officials to give talks on these two topics, as well as on how to maintain personal hygiene and cleanliness.

When probed further, we found out that the school apparently has no incidents of smoking, drug or alcohol abuse or moral promiscuity. There were no serious social issues in the school, according to the teacher.

Nithiyia