Gccnhs Supports Doh Program On Students' Nutritional Status Poem by LADY NIKKA LOFRANCO

The nutritional status of school-aged children greatly affects their health, cognition, and subsequently their educational achievement. The school plays a big part to this mater for it is an opportune setting to provide health and nutrition services to disadvantaged children.
The baseline nutritional status result of Gingoog City Comprehensive National High school reveals that the total prevalence of severely wasted students is 1.48% while the wasted students accounts for about 7.21%. It is observed that even a slight under nutrition greatly affects learning this is supported by the increasing cases of headache and other ailments reported in the school clinic. Undernourishment causes an individual's immune system to get weak resulting for a person to be sick easily, poor physical growth, and poor intellectual development and has a disabling effect on the physical and mental capacity of school children. Because of this the school conducted numerous health promoting activities to support the health of the students not only this severely wasted cases but the whole population.
One of the programs of the school clinic is the implementation of Mass Drug administration for soil transmitted helminthiasis program of our government which is being done twice in a school year this is during the month of July and January. Over 3253 illegible students were dewormed and no adverse reactions of the medication were noted. Next, the school also sponsors feeding program for this undernourished students which offers free healthy lunch for them. An improvement of their BMI (body mass index) was observed after the period of the program. Another strategy for health promotion is room to room lectures and symposiums which are organized by the school nurse, the topic includes proper hygiene, importance of hand washing, illness prevention such as tuberculosis and dengue fever and ways to eat healthy. It is believed that health education builds students' knowledge, skills, and positive attitudes about health. Also, it motivates students to improve and maintain their health, prevent disease, and reduce risky behaviors
The End line nutritional status shown a good result as the percentage of the severely wasted students went down from 1.4% to 1.22% while the wasted dropped from 7.21%. to 5.22%. thus, the school aims continue to advocate health promotion and illness prevention programs.