European journal of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

A COMPARATIVE STUDY TO ASSESS THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CHILD-TO-CHILD APPROACH IN TEACHING PERSONAL HYGIENE AMONG SELECTED RURAL AND URBAN MIDDLE SCHOOL CHILDREN, BANGALORE

Tejeshwari B V

Tejeshwari@gmail.com

Assess, nutritional status, school children, midday meal

Health promotion for and by children has great potential for bringing about positive and perceptible changes in their health, knowledge, attitudes, and above all, practices and behaviour. A nation’s wealth is measured by the health of the children. So health of the children is more important. Creating awareness among children is essential to ensure practice of good hygiene. Childhood period is most specific in bringing changes in life style. School is the ideal place for giving health education. It serves as an important institution in the life of the child. The education imparted in the school goes to their homes, family and neighborhood. It helps in transferring the knowledge from child- to- child, child to parent and child to neighborhood and thereby to the whole nation. This ultimately reflects on thoughts, actions and behaviour of each citizen. Health education will bring forth changes in the lifestyle that is set in children. Prevention costs less than cure and promotes health. This can be aided best by imparting adequate knowledge. Children are more susceptible to health problems. They need to be educated regarding health practices which help to promote their health and health of the community as a whole. Objectives: - 1. To assess the pre-test knowledge of the children in selected rural and urban middle school regarding personal hygiene. 2. To assess the post-test knowledge of the children in selected rural and urban middle school regarding personal hygiene. 3. To assess the effectiveness of child-to-child approach in teaching personal hygiene among rural and urban middle school children. 4. To compare the pre-test and post-test knowledge of both urban and rural middle school children regarding personal hygiene. Design: -Descriptive survey design was used to study to assess the nutritional status of school children and its relation to mid-day meal Programme in a selected rural school, Bangalore. 66 primary school children, in selected rural schools Bangalore were recruited by non-probability purposive sampling technique. Necessary administrative permission was obtained from concerned authority. Structured interview schedule was used to elicit the baseline data and structured questionnaires were used to elicit the knowledge regarding mid-day meal among selected rural school children, Bangalore. Setting: -The study was conducted in selected rural schools, Bangalore, 66 samples were recruited for the present study. Result: - The data was analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. Nutritional status of school children was assessed and tabulated, out of 66 school children according to weight for age status out of 66 school children, 14 only (21.21 percentages) is having normal nutritional status. Out of that 24 (36.36%) are having first degree malnutrition and 26 (39.4 percentages) are having second degree malnutrition. Only 2 (3.03 %) are having third degree malnutrition. It is evident that males are more prone to malnutrition. Out of 66 school children, 40.9 % are having normal nutritional status. Out of 66, 57.5 % are mildly impaired and 1.6% is severely impaired. Only 3.03 % of the school children are having third degree malnutrition. It is evident that males are having more impairment (3.12%), when compared to females (1.6%). Conclusion: - The overall experience of conducting this study was satisfying and enriching the knowledge. The study was a new learning experience for the investigator. The study shows that there is a great need to develop and implement Nutritional Status of School Children and Its Relation to Mid-Day Meal Programme