Education Ministry proposing compulsory physical exercise in schools

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Ministry of Education and Sports is drafting a school health policy to give guidelines on health issues that learners experience while in school.

According to Henry Semakula, the Deputy head of the Health/HIV unit in the Ministry of Education, key among the issues they are proposing in the new policy is physical exercises for the students and what is there as first aid when a child gets a problem while at school.

He added that the Ministry is also establishing that many schools are against their guidelines and the law by employing nurses who have no medical knowledge. He says that the new policy will come up with requirements for one to be a school nurse or to run a school bay.

However, having a school health policy is not completely new in Uganda since the Ministry of Health tried developing one in 2001 but it hasn’t yielded any results more than eighteen years later.

Health activists have promoted the policy as one that will solve school dropouts, especially for girls since it has proposals on how to handle reproductive and development issues such as menstrual hygiene, sanitary issues in addition to critical issues like what happens in case a girl gets pregnant at school.

Though they are in the process of putting together the document, Semakula is still unaware of when it will proceed to parliament or when it will finally be passed.

He says the Ministry of Education is compiling the policy in consultation with key ministries of Health and Gender, Labour and Social Development.

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