Before schools opened their gates for final year students at the tertiary and secondary levels, the Ghana Education Service (GES) had assured all Ghanaians that the health and safety protocols had been put in place to curb the spread of the new Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
Parents were guaranteed the safety of their wards in the schools, with the assurances that adequate measures were in place to ensure maximum security and protection for students while in school.
Under the guidelines, the students must wear masks at all times, wash their hands with soap under running water, or use alcohol-based hand sanitisers. We were also told about the strict observance of social distancing. The guidelines also expect the heads of the schools to provide thermometer guns or thermal scanners for checking the temperature of staff and students at all entry points of schools.
It also included the seating protocols in the classrooms and the dining halls, as well as the arrangement of beds in the dormitories. The schools were also to provide adequate waste management and toilet facilities for students and staff.
Most importantly, school heads were also to ensure that the school infirmaries or clinics are open at all times, and a full-time nurse stationed to provide first aid services, with boarding schools required to earmark a dormitory as a potential isolation centre, should there be the need to isolate any student.
However, to The Chronicle, much as all the above guidelines look good on paper, we are not satisfied with the implementation of the health and safety protocols.
So far, about seven schools, out of over 700 in Ghana, have recorded Covid-19 positive cases. Statistically, the data speaks favourably, but we are also appalled by the way and manner some of the cases had been dealt with.
For instance, the Ghana Education Service, in its guidelines, had given the assurance that the students would be registered with the school authorities, with their details and phone numbers taken. The Chronicle was, therefore, surprised about the lack of communication to parents when the Accra Girls Covid-19 incident occurred, with some parents who had wards in the school hearing about the situation on social media. This resulted in parents besieging the school to take their children away.
Another example is the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Senior High School tragedy. Much as the cause of death of the student is yet to be ascertained, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the sick student was at a point left unattended to, because the school authorities feared he was suffering from Covid-19.
What begs the question is, what then happened to the GES guidelines that schools would ensure that infirmaries or clinics are open at all times, and a full-time nurse stationed there to provide first aid services?
Allowing such tragedies to happen and interdicting the school authorities might not be enough, since the interdicted official will still be alive to turn his or her situation around, whilst a family would have lost a son or a daughter forever.
The laid down health and safety protocols must be strictly adhered to, and it is incumbent on the GES, and school heads through who they work, to be at the forefront of this crusade. We cannot allow our teeming youth in the schools to be decimated by the Coronavirus. We cannot toy with the future generations of this nation.
The post Editorial: Covid-19 safety protocols in our schools, so far not so good appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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