On the 6th of July, a team from the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine (SPM) department and Universiti Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) were invited to engage with the students at Sekolah Kebangsaan Bukit Pantai. As a part of their co-curricular activities, the Young Doctor Program (Kelab Doktor Muda) reached out to our team, and we were asked to provide health education to the near 300 students at the school.
Dr Rama Krishna, our Public Health Medicine specialist, got the ball rolling by breaking the ice with the students and delivering his succinct talk on Safety and Health in School. He briefly explained the common hazards encountered inside and outside the school, also with other associated risks. He also highlighted methods to manage these risks such as the ergonomic way to carry backpacks and the proper way to crossroads safely.
This was followed by a sharing session by Dr Chin Si Ming from the Department of Public Health on the Prevention of Infectious Diseases such as COVID-19, Influenza, Hand Foot and Mouth Disease as well as general preventive measures to avoid infectious diseases. The students were very attentive, and it was very encouraging to see that these students already had impressive baseline knowledge of the prevention of infectious diseases.
Finally, Staff Nurse Siti Nadhila from the Department of Public Health had a fun, interactive session with the students by demonstrating the basic steps of Hand Hygiene using hand sanitisers. After the short demonstration, a small group of students volunteered to perform all the steps of Hand Hygiene to their teachers and peers on stage.
The team was accompanied by Dr Lim Yin Cheng from the Occupational Safety, Health and Environment Unit, and Dr Sumitra Ropini from the Department of Public Health. All in all, it was a day full of fun and fruitful knowledge sharing.
We are very grateful for the opportunity to share our thoughts and knowledge during this short visit, and we sincerely hope the students and teachers of SK Bukit Pantai were able to benefit from the talk. After all, to quote William Butler Yeats, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
The write-up was prepared by Dr Sumitra Ropini, Dr Rama Krishna, Dr Chin Si Ming, Staff Nurse Nadhila, and Dr Lim Yin Cheng from the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya.
You must be logged in to post a comment.