Symptoms of prevalent ailments among elementary school children

ABSTRACT

The characteristics of a group of elementary school children who visited the school health visitor room were observed and descriptive data were obtained for 318 pupils during a three-month period. The results showed that the higher the grade, the greater the frequency of visitation to health visitor. Also, most visits occurred during the second half of each academic week. Types of complaints varied with sex, school grade, and social class. Abdominal colic was the most frequent complaint occurring among girls [17.33%]. While skin rash occurred only among boys. Fever ranked first among pupils of the first two grades, while toothache and abdominal colic were predominating among pupils of the fifth and sixth grades. Both toothache and headache were the most frequently occurring problems among children of high social class [21.62%. 16.22%], while fever was the first complaint among middle and low social class children together [15.57%]. The school health visitor could interfere with the complaints of about one-third of all pupils. Those constituted all children with nosebleed and most children with headache and trauma [84.21%, 71.43% respectively]. On the other hand, pupils who were referred by the health visitor to the school health unit accounted for two-thirds of all pupils. These constituted all pupils with fever, sore throat, skin rash, eye problems and coughing and most pupils with toothache [78.95%]. It was concluded that health seeking illness behaviour was a learned process. Sex, school grade, social class and the day of the week; each of these had a role in the type of the presenting complaint to the health visitor during the school day. Also, the role of health visitor in dealing with the pupils complaints in the school was affirmed