Field Survey Conducted on Public Senior High School Sickbays in Ghana

Reporting date: November 28, 2022
Reported by: Keiko Nakayama

My name is Keiko Nakayama. I am a master student of Graduate School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nagasaki University, Satellite Course for International Health Development.
I am currently conducting research on "the utilization of sickbays in public senior high schools and students' perceptions of sickbays in Ghana”.

I went to Ghana in July this year and conducted a questionnaire survey on sickbays and observed sickbays in four public senior high schools in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality, Eastern Region, in Ghana.

The questionnaire survey was administered to grade 2 and grade 3 students in senior high schools, and questions included whether or not they used the sickbay, reasons for visiting the sickbay, and their perception of and satisfaction with the sickbay.

Under the Covid-19 pandemics, Ghana issued a notice to public senior high schools to set up a sickbay and assign a nurse to the school. In the Lower Manya Krobo municipality, all four public senior high schools have a nurse in school. And also, each school has one designated hospital for collaboration.

The utilization of the sickbay was higher than I had expected.
In the future, based on the survey, I would like to look at factors affecting satisfaction with use.