Health status of school children during questionnaire survey in Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Insufficient attention has been paid to the health problems of school-age children in Nigeria due to the absence of baseline data on the health status of this group. This paper presents results of analysis of how school children perceive their own health from questionnaire survey originally designed to identify schools in which urinary schistosomiasis occurs by masking it with other health problems. School-based questionnaire asking about recent health problems was administered by teachers to school children in 101 public primary schools in Ogun State. A total of 8,422 children aged 5 to 16 years took part in this study. Of this, 90.8 % of children reported having had one health problem in the last 4 weeks. Of the 8 health problems asked, the average number reported by each child was 3.27. The distributions of the prevalence of each condition among schools were similar. For most conditions a greater percentage of boys than girls reported each health problem. This study concluded that school children in Ogun State do not perceive themselves to be healthy and suggest the use of school health questionnaire to assess and identify common health problems in school children. Keywords : School-age children, common health problems, questionnaire, Nigeria. Nigerian Journal of Parasitology Vol. 27 2006: pp. 81-84