A four day Multi-country training on the Global School-based Student Health Survey (GSHS) is underway in Harare, Zimbabwe, amidst growing calls for countries to conduct new studies around children’s health behaviours so as to come up with tangible evidence and data to inform policy.
By Michael Gwarisa
The training is being attended by participants from Ministries of Health and the NCD focal persons from the WHO Country Offices from Cabo Verde, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
The GSHS is a low-cost collaborative surveillance project designed to help countries measure and assess the behavioural risk factors and protective factors in 10 key areas among young people aged 13 to 17 years. The project uses a self-administered questionnaire to obtain data on young people’s health behaviour and protective factors related to the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among children and adults worldwide.
In an interview with HealthTimes on the side-lines of the event, Dr Tsistsi Siwela, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Zimbabwe Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) Focal-Person said Zimbabwe needed a new and updated Global School-based Student Health Survey.
The purpose of this workshop is to train National Focal persons to plan and implement the Global School-based Students Heath Survey. This survey collects data from adolescents aged 13 to 17 years old. Data on NCDs Risk factors and protective factors. The participants are being trained to plan for it and implement the survey and we just hope that after this training, we will have the resources to actually implement and conduct the survey,” said Dr Siwela.
Zimbabwe last conducted a GSHS survey 20 years ago in 2003 and according to Dr Siwela, it was no longer speaking to the challenges facing today’s adolescents.
“At the moment, we don’t have data because the last survey was done in 2003. We don’t have data on adolescents particularly looking at the NCDs. For example substance abuse, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, physical activity, some of those protective factors, Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) and all those important factors that affect our health. It will be good to conduct this survey and have current data that will inform policies.”
She added that NCDs were increasing and there was need to conduct a new survey on NCDs among the 13 to 17 year olds or even younger age groups to ascertain some of the risk factor.
Meanwhile, Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC), Environmental Health Officer, Natasha Muziringa said sedentary lifestyles being led by some children and adolescents could trigger a rise in NCDs.
“As Zimbabwe, this training is a very important exercise to us and we are taking it very seriously because as a country, we a facing so vast health challenges amongst our youth. Currently we have mental health challenges among the adolescents which I think they are under-diagnosed or the diagnosis is poor just because we have shortage of trained health personal, we don’t have psychologists in schools and most mental health programs are not encompassed in the school curriculum or if they are there, they are not being followed,” said Muziringi.
Since 2001, WHO has been supporting the Global School-based Student Health Survey (GSHS) project to enhance NCD surveillance related to young people’s health behavior in LMICs.
The GSHS provides a mechanism for countries to monitor young people’s health behavior in a range of critical areas and guide the implementation and evaluation of prevention and health promotion efforts that are geared to address these health topics.
The GSHS is a school-based survey of students aged 13 to 17 years and is designed to gather information about tobacco use, alcohol, drug use, violence and injury and protective factors.
In the African Region, most of GSHS surveys data are out of date and not replacement on policy development. The survey helps countries develop priorities, establish programmes, and advocate for resources for school health and youth health programmes and policies. It also allows for comparisons across countries regarding the prevalence of health behaviors and protective factors; and establish trends in the prevalence of health behaviors and protective factors by country for use in evaluation of school health and youth health promotion.
The 47 Afro members states need to update their GSHS and Global School Health Policies and Practices Survey (G-SHPPS) to inform planning and policies on NCD risk factor among children. WHO AFRO is collaborating with the surveillance unit in HQ to organize a training workshop on the GSHS for 6 countries (Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe) in the region.
