Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) has called for a comprehensive audit of health facilities and systems in all second cycle schools.
This forms part of proposals that Eduwatch has made in the wake of incidences of students dying in some senior high schools.
The latest incident occurred in Kalpohin Senior High School.
Eduwatch therefore reiterated its call for the Ghana Education Service to, “Liaise with the Ghana Health Service to develop and implement a case management protocol for handling sick students in second cycle schools, Monitor the implementation of the protocols and mainstream same into indicators for school supervision and the Key Performance Indicators of school heads, Liaise with the Ghana Health Service to ensure sick bays have the required drugs, competent personnel and transport facilities to deliver quality health care to students and staff on our campuses, and Liaise with the Ghana Health Service to ensure the National Health Insurance Scheme is fully functioning in all sick bays in second cycle schools.
Ïn a press release dated February 20, Eduwatch said it is concerned about the growing incidences of student deaths due to delay in seeking emergency care for the students.
“On Tuesday, 20th February, 2024, we learned of the death of a student of Kalpohin Senior High School. According to our sources, the sick student was entrusted to the care of a fellow student to transport him to the hospital after being granted an exeat. The difficulty in accessing transport delayed access to a heath facility. The student reportedly died upon arrival at the Tamale Teaching Hospital,” Eduwatch stated.
“This is the second reported death in our secondary schools in less than two (2) weeks resulting from the wrongful exercise of discretion by school authorities, with at least four (4) more of such cases widely reported since 2017. As indicated in our February 12 press release, the lack of quality health facilities and effective systems for managing health cases in senior high schools is fundamental to the regular issues of poor health case management,” parts of the press release read.
While sympathizing with the family of the deceased in this trying moment, Eduwatch said, “We call on the Ghana Police Service to be swift with their investigations into this unfortunate incident. Eduwatch works to promote an equitable, inclusive, and responsive education system that assures quality and equal opportunities for all.”