Primary school teacher as a primary health care worker.

ABSTRACT

School children (1608) were examined for three items (nails, scalp hairs and teeth) relating to personal hygiene and relevant infective conditions from two sets of villages i.e. one set where primary school teacher was working as primary health care worker (Group I) and the other set where Community Health Volunteer (CHV) was delivering primary health care (Group II). The objective was to evaluate the efficiency of school teachers' role vis-a-vis CHVs' in imparting health education to school children. Out of 1608 school children, 801 belonged to Group I villages and the remaining 807 to Group II villages. From the results, it was evident that children of Group I villages were better with respect to all the items related to personal hygiene and infective conditions excepting scalp infections, where difference was not statistically significant, indicating teachers' superiority over the CHVs' in imparting health education to school children.