ADEC, Seha meet with 128 private school nurses from Abu Dhabi

The meeting was held to highlight the important role played by school nurses in terms of vaccinations, and how to help encourage more students to take necessary vaccines on time.

Despite a team of Seha nurses taking care of private school vaccinations, a private school student's vaccination is a shared responsibility between the school health's vaccination team from Seha and the private school nurse.

Kindergarten to Grade 12 Private school students across the Emirate of Abu Dhabi are meant to receive various types of vaccinations to help prevent the spread of contagious diseases. Grades 1, 5 and 9 are required to go through preventive comprehensive medical screening.

Abu Dhabi Emirate Federal Law #27 of 1981 chapter 3, article 21 requires that all students should be immunized against communicable diseases. These requirements are determined by Health Authority Abu Dhabi (HAAD) and the higher national committee for immunization program.

"Many parents chose not to vaccinate their children out of fear, but this results in students falling sick. That is why we held this meeting, to ask private school nurses to align with ADEC and Seha's team of nurses and help educate parents and the students with the crucial benefits of vaccinations. Vaccines help protect school children from receiving a virus or a bacteria, especially those whose immunity system is compromised or weak," said Engineer Hamad Al Dhaheri, ADEC's Executive Director of PSQA Sector.

During the meeting, school nurses were reminded of their exact responsibility to help prepare students for a vaccination. Some of which included assessing students vaccination status through the student's health record, pre-school vaccination record and school health pre-vaccination checklist; nurses are also required to list the students eligible for vaccination as per their grades, distribute and collect the signed vaccination consent from parents, the filled pre-vaccination checklist, and a copy of a valid health insurance card.

Dr. Najah Mustapha, School Health Services Director, said, "The health of children is a major concern to all stakeholders in the emirate of Abu-Dhabi as they are the future leaders of tomorrow. Their well-being affects their academic performance and achievements in life. One of the crucial elements of disease prevention and health promotion is immunization. Parents as well as school nurses play vital roles in ensuring effective immunization especially against communicable diseases. Towards this direction, AHS and Abu Dhabi Education Council will collaborate with nurses working in Abu Dhabi-based private schools with the aim of tackling strategies that enhance immunization coverage among students."

School nurses are also responsible of identifying student counts eligible for a school age vaccination program, communicate the targeted students count with the school health vaccination team, send notification letters to student's parents about the vaccination appointment as well as educate students about the vaccine.

However when speaking to school nurses, they all felt that their role regarding vaccines poses a huge challenge for them.

According to Wageda Ghazi, a school nurses in Elite School (KG-12), many parents refuse to sign the vaccination consent letter. "No matter what we do, it's always a parent's choice to accept a vaccine for their child, and many reject, so our hands are tied."

Amal Neimatallah, school nurse in the Manhal Private School (KG-12) explained that many parents refuse to sign on the vaccination paperwork, and in a lot of cases students fail to deliver the paperwork to their parents, especially amongst the younger students. "Grade 1 is a huge challenge in our school, since students are very young, and either forget to give the paperwork to their parents or refuse to, since their scared of the vaccine."

Dowell Barreto, School Nurse at the Emirates Private School (KG-Grade 12) feels that there are major communication problems amongst schools and parents and he feels this can be solved through three methods: holding out regular meetings with parents about the importance of vaccination, using social media and distributing educational material (pamphlets, leaflets, brochures) to help educate parents and keep them alert on the different vaccinations required.

In order to prevent an outbreak of a serious disease and to keep the health and welfare of students under control, ADEC and Seha are planning to launch an awareness campaign regarding the importance of vaccination for parents.

"Parents are our main stakeholders and we will do all we can to reach out to them for the sake of our youth. Seha and school nurses are doing a great job, however there's very little they can do if parents don't cooperate. That is why we request them to work with us and help promote the health of our children," concluded Engineer Al Dhaheri.