Health Education
➀ Health Curriculum
This aims to address the issues of low access to health education/information, and lack of health awareness (particularly on personal hygiene, preventable common diseases, diarrhea, and water contamination). Through health promotion, we aim to increase health awareness and decrease the relevant disease morbidity rates. The curriculum consists of 7 topics split into various difficulties, and is taught to 3000+ students at primary and secondary schools across three villages. Topics include WASH, cleanliness of the environment, food and nutrition, dental health, wound management, epidemics and waterborne diseases, sex education, mental health and anti-drugs, anti-smoking and anti-alcohol.
➁ Mentorship Programme (New in 2019)
Older This program involves higher year level students as mentors and lower year level students as mentees. They will gather during the mentorship day, which is planned to be held twice a year, to play board games and do dramas together. The board games are designed to test students on various health knowledge in the health curriculum, and serve to strengthen their knowledge on our curriculum.
➂ Hygiene Booklet
Student hygiene habit tracking assessed by teachers every month using the criteria we provide.
➃ Train-the-trainer
Medical professionals will conduct training for local volunteers and nurses. Topics taught are based on the community's most updated needs and some of these include women’s health, first-aid, food & nutrition, anti-substances, and more. The aim here is to promote sustainability. We hope that these local volunteers and nurses will become well-equipped with sufficient knowledge to educate their neighbors in the future, creating a rippling effect of health education.
Examples of mentorship board game cards and drama scenarios of epidemics and waterborne diseases
Handwashing demonstration by students after teaching
Health Checks
➀ Health Check at Schools
This aims to promote students’ awareness of their own health conditions, provide targeted health education, and refer serious cases to local clinics for further follow-ups. As students are still in their developmental ages, identification of certain health issues may be more effectively addressed. Whilst medical professionals will be responsible for checking spinal health, eye alignment, and dental health, volunteers from Medical Outreachers will be mainly responsible for measuring BMI, BP, and eyesight (using Snellen charts).
➁ Health Camp
A 3-day theme-based health camp will be held near the local community health clinic (CHC) in the village. The CHC is stationed with community nurses (but not doctors), equipped with knowledge of the delivery of a baby and antenatal care. In the vicinity, there is a government health post providing medical service and vaccination. However, these are all underutilized. During this health camp, we will invite Nepalese doctors from Kathmandu to conduct free medical consultations and checkups for villagers. Whilst students from Hong Kong will be responsible for measuring BMI and blood pressure, local doctors will conduct more holistic consultations and prescribe suitable medications. We aim to attract local villagers to the camp to promote their use of local health services. Patient records obtained through the health camp will also be kept at the clinic for future follow-ups.
We will also educate villagers on basic health practices during the health camp. Talks covering health knowledge will be delivered to the villagers so as to raise their awareness of individual health. We may employ interactive ways of delivering our message during the talks. Through this, villagers are able to gain a better understanding as well as stronger memory concerning the newly-learnt health messages.
Health check at a primary school at Namtar village
Health camp at Bharta village
Household Surveys
During household visits, we will conduct surveys to evaluate villagers’ knowledge, behavior and attitude towards different aspects of health. This is part of our continual effort in evaluating the effectiveness of our interventions, updating our health education curriculum and ensuring that future endeavors are tailored to the community’s most updated need. Moreover, we will be teaching villagers basic personal practices, and correcting any health misconceptions revealed throughout the survey. We will also give out posters about recommended healthy practices to households we visited, as well as distribute out soaps, toothpastes and toothbrushes, which are scarce in supply, to further promote hygiene practices.
The survey consists of questions under household water supply and practices, disease morbidity/ mortality and management, personal hygiene, government health post/ community health clinic usage, maternal health, food beliefs and practices and mental well-being.
