DO UGANDA'S UPE SCHOOLS NEED INFIRMARIES?

Teaching is an exciting experience if you are dealing with learners in good health but very trying if you have sickly ones. Serving in Uganda’s public school in a hard-to-reach area has been and still is a very exciting journey with all its challenges.

The most outstanding challenge is the big number of sickly learners registered on a daily basis which of course is discouraging and hurtful to a teacher. When I had just been deployed in Kigandalo Primary School, it was all smiles and excitement to give back to God for how far He had brought me, and to the community as well. It was visible that classroom teacher, the children and their parents needed a hand. The frequent and numerous illnesses amongst my learners on a daily basis did not bother me much at first, I only pondered on how to catch them up with the contents taught in their absentia.

“An infirmary should be the first place a learner gets first aid….”

Fast forward to the first time I battled typhoid, its three phased attack each with its own unique pain made me think that I would lose my life. I resolved that schools need have a sickbay funded and stocked by the government and well-wishers. I had the first two episodes while at school. Not knowing what was ailing me, I visited the nearby government health center, only to be weighed without any test, blood or otherwise. I learned the hard way when the attending doctor told patients to buy the required materials like injections, gloves, etc for treatment. In his defense, the government had not supplied them with medicine and equipment in a period of three months. The only available medication were miserable paracetamols to kill the pain from the splitting headaches,  prescriptions are given patients on a piece of paper to be purchased from a nearby clinic owned by the very doctor who wrote them. For the first time I was grateful for all the sickbays we had in the schools I attended.

I can relate my experience to every single one of the over 10 (ten) primary one learners who report sick on a daily basis relying on the same health facility I visited, who are most likely unable to buy the prescribed medication from other outlets. With the return of rain, malarial related cases are on the increase, more anxiety for teachers. This shouldn’t be the case though, especially for a naturally resource endowed country with tax paying citizens like ours. The public schools need infirmaries to help give instant treatment to the learners and the teachers as well. A learner cannot attend classes while sick and a sick teacher cannot attend to learners.

Kigandalo Primary School already has eight (8) death toll of learners since its inception, lost to illnesses such as malaria, pneumonia and others due to negligence, absence of infirmaries in the school premise, coupled with the other already mentioned predicaments of the public health facilities. There are cases of learners who are affected by the weather and get no help, only to be laid on a mat in the head teacher’s office and wait till they are better off to be escorted or helped on a boda-boda to be taken home without any immediate medication.

An infirmary should be the first place a learner gets first aid from before proceeding to any other prominent facility, government or private. In most cases, the learners will not need to be sent back home to get medicine for a stomachache, headache, fever, etc. Pain killers will be available in such situations. For those who get minor accidents like cuts or sprains from running will also be attended to. This can in a way will help maintain and improve not only the academic but also extra-cocurricular performances of the learners and curb the numerous health related absenteeism that can be handled in the sickbays.

 

Nannyanga Restetuta

Teach For Uganda Fellow

Cohort 5

Kigandalo Primary School

Mayuge District