About 490,514 of the second batch of the Free School High School (SHS) will benefit from a free medical screening to ensure good health among the students whilst they embark on studies on campus.
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) would jointly do this with the Ghana Education Service (GES). These came out at the end of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which the two institutions signed in Accra.
The Director-General of GHS Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, said, it is geared towards realising the Universal Health Goal.
Students, he said, would be taken through Eye, X-ray, BP, Physical Education (PE) screening and educated on nutrition that would develop their system for their course.
Dr Nsiah-Asare said, the maiden of the exercise, conducted in 2017 nationwide, had about 300,000 of students screened at the various SHS.
He said the initiative would help strengthen school health, revealing that later, they would push for a policy on keeping a database of the students and follow their health history throughout their lives.
Dr Nsiah-Asare said, health promotion would be done in conjunction with the Environmental Health Officers to ensure proper sanitation on campus and a competition would be opened to ensure the cleanest school.
Dr Nsiah-Asare signed on behalf of the GHS whereas Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, the Director General for GES signed for his outfit.
Meanwhile; the newly introduced double track system would begin Tuesday, September 11, 2018, and is expected to create space to accommodate more students due to an increase in enrollment.
It is also expected to reduce class size, increase contact hours, and increase the number of holidays.
Government adopted the double-track (semester/sandwich) system to cater for increased enrollment under its flagship programme, the Free Senior High School, due to deficit in infrastructure.
400 out of the 696 public SHSs in the country have been captured under the system.
