Friend of the Human Race

Student to student

Yombo Primary had the highest mortality rate in Tanzania. Now it’s a beacon for educationalists and public health workers alike. Dennis Mazali explains why…
My involvement in Yombo Primary School goes back to 1999, when FHR secretary Stewart Petrie and British environmental health officer Steve Payne visited Tanzania, on one of their many visits to assist environmental health practitioners in the country in starting a BSc in environmental health.
We used to take them around Dar es Salaam, and I remember on that occasion visiting Ilala Municipal Council. It was a coincidence that Stewart Petrie asked the chief EHO what sort of health services students in primary schools normally get access to in a city like Dar es Salaam. The answers did not convince us that there was anything in particular on offer.
The team decided to visit a number of primary schools in Ilala municipality. When we visited Yombo, in a suburb of Dar es Salaam, about 21km from the city centre on the way to Dar es Salaam airport, we were stuck by the pathetic situation in terms of sanitation and availability of clean water.
We thought it would be a good idea for public health charity Water for Kids, the School of Hygiene at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences and Tanzania’s public health professional’s association, CHAMATA (the acronym is based on the Swahili for environmental health officers of Tanzania), to do something to improve water and sanitation at the school. At that time the school had 3,000 pupils. Now there are four primary schools in the same compound with more than 8,000 pupils. After many visits, including input from a volunteer from UK, Rob Couch, who was attached to the School of Hygiene, we started a number of health interventions. We currently have programmes covering health education and promotion, water and sanitation. We have initiated storytelling, promotion of hand washing skills and peer-to-peer focus group discussions on school absenteeism and family education, including the effects of early marriages.
Yombo Primary School and the School of Hygiene have agreed to cooperate on preparing and distributing health education materials, training teachers basic computer skills and managing essential health intervention to promote public health. We’re working together with Yombo community in creating and advising a school health committee, looking at how best to tackle health problems in their community.
As head of the school, automatically I’m responsible for overseeing this co-operation. Meanwhile, environmental health students from the School of Hygiene are responsible for managing specific interventions we have designed for the school. For example, our students designed a drainage system connected to a soakaway and supervised the builders while it was constructed.
Our students use Yombo Primary as a community lab, to test their knowledge and skills on prevention of communicable diseases such as malaria, cholera, and schistosomiasis (bilharzia).
A new community centre, currently under construction, will accommodate a dining hall and rooms for counseling, HIV/AIDS testing and hosting social events. It will be equipped with big TV and video screen and small-scale water chlorinator.
One of the lessons learned is that primary school children are keen to decide and share what they want in their life. For example, when environmental health students requested posters and brochures designed to help prevent of malaria, Yombo Primary School children came up with very valuable comments as to how best those materials would be modified with colours, design and content to make them more understandable to school-age students. It was very clear to us that 95 per cent of the materials available were not designed to target primary school children.
Very interestingly, if students have access to clean water and a toilet their attendance and achievement is likely to increase, especially among girls. We have not done research to prove this in particular, but Yombo Primary School standard seven results are very good compared to five years ago, before water and sanitation at the school was improved. Yombo School now attracts 45 per cent more applications for joining standard one compared to a nearby school.
Dennis Mazali is head and course leader of the environmental health programme at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania, and a Friend of the Human Race board member.