School Health Provisions In Retreat
In Jordan

The Health School Program has been set up to promote the health of school-age students. Children and adolescents between 5 and 19 years old usually suffer from many health problems that can be largely prevented. Those programs also show the health and developmental needs of students as they progress from childhood to puberty.

The Health School Program in Jordan provides a free examination service for students in public schools during periodic visits by doctors and dentists. Those programs are designed and supervised by the Ministry of Health's School Health Directorate, the School Health departments in accordance with School Health Services Instructions of 2004.

Students are referred to the health center if needed by the school doctor for the purpose of confirming diagnosis. Laboratory test services are also provided free of charge for urine test, stool test, throat swab, hemoglobin test and white blood cell count, in addition to X-rays to diagnose tuberculosis.

An analysis of data released by the Jordanian Ministry of Health reveals a decline in the number of students benefiting from school health services in Jordan since 2019/2020, and a decrease in those numbers has been observed in previous years too.

Shortage of staff, and high work burdens are among the most common challenges reported in school health programs, according to the World Health Organization.

In Jordan, the Health School Program faces many challenges, especially the absence of a generalist doctor in public schools where more than 500 students are enrolled, and the absence of a generalist doctor and a dentist in public schools where more than 1,000 students are enrolled. These specialists are usually affiliated administratively to the Ministry of Education, according to the National School Health Strategy.

The analysis also indicates that the volume of laboratory tests carried out by the Health School Program dropped to less than one tenth of its previous volume during the last decade alone. The number of hemoglobin tests for students also dropped to one tenth.

Anemia due to iron deficiency is the leading cause of ill health among school students, according to the World Health Organization. Also, one third of children in Jordan suffer from anemia, whose spread is due to household economic conditions – anemia in children is most common in the poorest families (38%).

Jordanian Ministry of Health statistics has also shown that the number of school water tests decreased noticeably in the last four years.

After remote learning was established at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, Minister of Water and Irrigation Raed Abu Al-Saud announced that rooftop and ground-level water reservoirs of schools have become stagnant and needed treatment in cooperation and coordination with the relevant authorities before they could be re-used, but the number of school water tests carried out during that same year was only 871, a decrease of about 700% from the previous year.

The public health and community medicine specialist Abdel-Aziz Tayoun says the regular monitoring of drinking water in schools is necessary to detect the different pollutants that may exist and cause diseases like stomach and intestinal inflammation. Other more dangerous diseases are transmitted through water, like hepatitis A and polio.

Tayoun highlights the importance of school health, since schools represent a great opportunity to care for students' health, raise their awareness and instill in them healthy behaviors while they are still growing up. This is extremely important as students are more prone to infection with communicable diseases, and more exposed to accidents as they are growing up, warning that the decline in school health services provision may lead to serious consequences.