Physical health status of children entering the first year primary school in Tripoli in 2004: the need for more strengthening

ABSTRACT

To assess the physical health status of children entering first year primary school in Tripoli. Descriptive cross sectional study, conducted between 15/7/2004 and 15/9/2004, by simple random sampling where two polyclinics were selected, and 509 children selected by systematic random sampling. the study showed that 41.1% of the children had dental caries, 17.5% had nocturnal enuresis, 12% of the children suffer from Myopia, 8.8% suffer from Bronchial asthma, 7.9% were over weight, 4.3% had one or more of contagious diseases with significant impact of the level of mother education in their distribution and 5.2% of the male children had genitourinary malformations. Health appraisal at school entry is of important value in detecting and recording diseases among school children. And more researches to meet the needs of school children in different health dimensions were recommended