School health centre fails to serve purpose

The school health centre in Saidpur municipality town, the lone hospital of its kind in the district, has virtually failed to achieve its goal due to lack of awareness campaign and publicity.

Locals, however, said only a few students visit the government-run health centre, meant for providing medical treatment for school students, daily as most of them are not aware about its existence due to lack of motivation programme.

Moreover, remote location, coinciding of visiting time with school hours and most importantly insufficient man power are the reasons to blame for making the hospital almost useless, the alleged.

The health centre was established about 40 years ago, aiming to provide health services to nearly 60,000 students of 129 primary and secondary level educational institutions in the upazila.

Meanwhile, the health centre is supposed to provide different supports to the adolescents through counselling and providing materials like sanitary napkins, supplied by the representatives of World Health Organization (WHO) or local NGOs.

Alongside providing treatment of various common diseases, ensuring proper nutrition of beneficiaries, addressing iron deficiency, supplying of deworming tablets, without any cost, are also some mandatory responsibilities of the government organisation.

During a recent visit to the health centre, this correspondent found the well-equipped building is suffering from severe manpower shortage as out of the six recommended posts only two, a female doctor and a pharmacist, are currently posted there.

Pharmacist Shafiul Islam said there are two posts of doctors, but only one currently working there since November 2022.

"I used to serve the beneficiaries for nearly three years in absence of the doctors," Shafiul said, adding that the valuable assets of the centre are also at risk of being theft as there is no assigned nightguard for long.

Though this correspondent didn't saw any treatment seekers during his two hours stay, Shafiul claimed that on an average 12 to 15 students take treatment at the health centre daily.

Zubair Rahman and Sumon Islam, students of Bangabandhu High School, said as the health centre is located about one kilometre far from their institution, it is quite impossible for them to go there for treatment during the school hours.

Rukhsana Zaman, principal at Marrigold Tutorial, said the school health centre in Saidpur has failed to achieve its desired goal as most of the students hardly know about it due to lack of publicity.

Dr Rubaiya Binte Wahed, medical officer at Saidpur School Health Centre, said alongside visiting different schools regularly, they regularly provide treatment to a number of students from nearby schools.