Assessment of Vulnerability Status of Public School Children and Existing School Health Programmes in Nigeria

Addressing health needs of vulnerable children (VC) in school has been a source of concern to relevant stakeholder today. While so much attention has been given to VC out of school and those made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS infection in Nigeria, those that are made vulnerable by other means such as poverty, disaster and family discord have been neglected. Thus, this study is designed to analyse the current situation in term of vulnerability status of school children, the public health response to their care and offers strategic suggestions for improve school health programmes.

        The research followed a descriptive mixed method cross-sectional design. The VC were recruited through a multistage sampling technique from two local government areas of Osun State, Nigeria. Data on vulnerability of school children were collected using vulnerability index (VI) while key informants interview gave the public health nurses the opportunity to share their experiences on public health services for school children. The data from the key informant interview were analysed by summarising key findings in theme while data collected from OVC were analysed through descriptive and inferential statistics at 0.05 level of significance using SPSS version 16.

        A total number of 2484 school children were assessed. The mean age was 13 +1.6 years. The result shows that 5.7% (n=142) were not vulnerable, 68.0% (n=1681) were vulnerable, 22.7% (n=563) were more vulnerable while 3.6% (n=90) were mostly vulnerable,  The result established that a lot of children in public schools were vulnerable and there was shortage of public health manpower and services in place to meet their needs. A framework for improving school health programme to meet the needs of the vulnerable school children was developed based on interraction of the researcher with the public health nurses.

     The study revealed the needs of OVC across the vulnerability indices. There is need for a viable school health programme for early identification of school children for prompt care and support. Utilising approriate framework for service provision will assist in providing  comprehensive and coordinated care.