Beyond Akriti Bhatia's death...Asthma hit the spot light...

(de news)

If this was Utopia, I would have recommended schools and colleges to employ doctors and nurses. Fortunately this a wish that can rightly be called 'impossible'. An honest attempt has room, however, 'to raise the health consiousness'.

Diseases can hit any time any place. Most institutions give stress to sports medicine. Other modalities fail to grab atention. The furore over Akruthi Bhatia's death added asthma to the hitlist...hopefully a red-alert may have lit up about the severity of asthma and why the brain requires oxygen. Hope no more kid will die of asthma in future...but there remains a multitude of other villains.

The school administrarion should maintain medical details about the students enrolled. If they feel it's cumbersome, they should atleast try to lure clinicians into regular health care camps within premises. Parents should make it a note to inform the class teachers or whoever concerned about the probable medical risks that their kids suffer from.

You can't entirely blame a teacher for remaining 'mummmmm' when one of her students suddenly enter an episode of siezure and hits the floor. The teacher least expected it, was least prepared for it. I am not supporting the principal for wasting 45 minutes when Ankiti Bhatia was fighting for air. But just imagine if, in the scenario I mentioned, the teacher knew that the kid has a history of epilepsy, and she was trained for the basic first aid practises. She/he would always have given a better attention to this kid.

A stitch in time could have had scope. It might not be feasible to train each and every tutor around in the management of all medical emergencies. But the basics can be made aware of.

Let the media intervene. Not by adding to the Ankita issue...by starting columns and ads about the fundamentals of first-aid. How to manage emergencies. Let school and college administration start boosting 'necessary' training. Here are my

recommendations:

1)Display informative banners in school and college premises.Legible ones that are digestible to kids of different age groups. Stress on the most common risk factors and address the most emergency steps. It's an easy task...assign the high school kids...they'll search the library or net and make these for the school.

2)'basic' training to all staff members.

3)Routine medical camps for students

4) If possible maintain health records. Better interaction between parents and kids.

5) A fresh 'first-aid' kit with the necessary medications.

6) hmmm...why not conduct 'inspections' tp check whether all these are being 'done' :)Insisting on medical details of students is 'okay' but needn't be made mandatory...But it has to be made a rule that 'every parent is probed for a relevant medical history' of kids.

Nithin Jayan

4th Year Medical Student

Class Of 2005 MBBS

Medical College Trivandrumhttp://evincere.blogspot.com/