Africa-Press – Uganda. The government has warned head teachers against hiding Covid-19 cases if they want their schools to remain open.
Addressing journalists in Kampala yesterday about a school-based surveillance system , Dr Joyce Moriku Kaducu, the State Minister for Primary Education, said head teachers that will give false information will be caught and their schools closed.
This comes after some schools reportedly hid Covid-19 cases before the government imposed the second lockdown last year.
Regarding faking vaccination cards, Dr Kaducu said: “We are always ahead. By the time we started vaccination, we already had a database. This is how we were able to identify the fake vaccination cards. We have put in place a system and we shall be able to identify any fake information from the schools. Certainly, they will be caught and their schools closed.”
The surveillance system aims at ensuring a crucial and minimum level of tracking and management of Covid cases in schools, linking their data to district health teams and health facilities.
A digital tool will be used, and schools that have no access to ICT facilities will use hard copies and the information will be fed in manually.
This will enable the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders to access learners’ information throughout the country.
“This is done to prevent Covid-19 outbreak in schools. We want to ensure that cases are identified early, referred to the health facility. All health centre IIIs are alert, and we are mapping the schools to the nearest health centre where there are rapid testing kits. This is what the school-based surveillance system is up to,” Dr Kaducu said.
The school-level training, which started yesterday in all districts, ends tomorrow. Dr Munir Safieldin, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) representative in Uganda, said the pandemic had hit hard the country’s education sector with about 15 million learners having their education disrupted since March 2020 when schools closed for the first time.
“Uganda must therefore now create a system to ensure that schools remain open, and that education can carry on without further interruptions. This is why the UK has partnered with Unicef and the Embassy of Ireland to assist the government to train schools in school-based Covid surveillance,” he said.
“Fortunately, Unicef is supporting the Ministry of Health in its campaign to vaccinate teachers and other high-priority groups. Also, the Ministry of Education is rolling out training to help teachers and head-teachers prevent, detect, and manage Covid-19 cases, and connect schools with health services to provide additional support,” Dr Safieldin added.
The UK has provided £450,000 (about Shs2b) to Unicef towards the initiative, while Ireland has given Euro 1.8 million (Shs7.2b) to Unicef for Uganda’s school reopening strategy.
A portion of that will be used for school-based surveillance to provide schools with tools to track cases as well as support mental health and psycho-social support.
Mental health and psycho-social well-being training will also be offered to teachers to enable them support students that have had challenges.
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