6
Working with Schools
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| The normal channels of health education, through the schools and through community health workers, rely on respected and believable sources of information -- teachers and health workers. These routes to the mothers and cooks should certainly be put to use as much as possible because teachers and volunteer health workers are trusted and well known in their communities. If these people don’t know about the importance of iodine, or give contrary information, then the IDD program is in trouble. |  |
Salt testing kits
In a number of countries, notably India, China and Bangladesh, children experiment with Salt Testing Kits provided by UNICEF to test salt brought from home. The children can see whether or not the white salt turns purple. If it does, it contains iodine.
School teachers do a good job monitoring iodine content as in Bhutan and Indonesia. But the statistical results of salt testing by children are not important. There are other locations and groups that can test salt more accurately and relay their findings in a form which is useful to managers. For school children, what matters is that they learn about the value of iodine, why iodine is important to their future and why iodine deficiency is a disaster for their future. What matters is the learning process.
Reaching at-risk populations through schools is an important way to teach the oncoming generations about the importance of using iodized salt. The school health curriculum is therefore a key instrument for sustaining the use of iodized salt.
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Box 9 - Schools are an Entry Point to Communities (Ecuador) In Ecuador, the IDD program focused on schools as a key entry point to communities at mild and severe iodine deficiency risk. First, the size of a community’s primary school (more than 120 pupils) was found to be statistically the most reliable indicator of iodized salt consumption -- surprisingly more reliable than thyroid palpation or urine samples which were time consuming and turned up a large number of false positives. After canton by canton random sampling of schools with under 120 pupils, the program combined diagnosis with educational activities by asking teachers in areas at active IDD risk to carry out a salt consumption survey. Children were grouped by family and shown the two, physically different types of salt, then simply asked to point to the salt used in their homes. Teachers used a self-learning module designed for them along with comic strips for the children explaining the importance of using iodized salt. Vanormelingen, K. and Vanderheyden, J.M. (1994) |
Communication Tool Kit 6 contains school activities and review exercises developed in Malawi. These activities may be adapted to teach children in other countries about the importance of iodine.
