Health programme launched
Juha Rumpunen, Anne-Marie Grouev, Paula Tanhuanpää, Dr. Marja Anttila, all of them from THL, Minister Dr. Kamwi, Anne Saloranta, Kari Saloranta and Dr. Forster, Deputy PS of Ministry of Health and Social Services.
The three-year programme called “Strengthening the school health programme in Namibia” runs from 2013 to 2015 and is financed by Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs with approximately N$ 6.7 million.
The School Health program partners will collaborate in strengthening the capacity of the personnel at the MoHSS and other line ministries to work with the Health Promoting Schools Initiative (HPSI) and to support the local authorities in improving their activities in school health.
This will include increasing the knowledge and skills on school health care and the comprehensive HPSI; project management; and on gathering and using health research results in order to enable evidence-based decision making.
The project will also develop ways and opportunities to link with others involved in school health care, both domestically and internationally.
The project is funded by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs employing the Inter-institutional Cooperation Instrument (ICI). Project activities started early this year and stretch nearly to the end of 2015.
The National Institute for Health and Welfare offers its expertise in school health and school health surveys, nutrition, reproductive health, health communication and web-based health communication, project management, evaluation and developing of regional state administrative agencies in health sector.
Namibia established a School Health Programme in 1990 as part of the Primary Health Care strategy. The WHO Health Promoting Schools Initiative (HPSI) was established in 1998 to promote and strengthen the SHP.
The goal of HPSI is to provide health services for all school-going children, making available the knowledge and skills they need to make informed decisions about their health and well-being, and to improve their quality of life.
HPSI is intended to increase the number of schools that can be called health-promoting schools.
Namibia also has a recent National School Health policy which was launched in 2008.
