Only 10 in every 100 schools have a sickbay, school clinic, or sanatorium, the latest survey by the Ministry of Health shows.
The Kenya Adolescent Health Survey 2019/2020 released on Friday shows 72 per cent of the schools that responded had first aid kits while 45 per cent had drug store facilities.
According to the survey, only five per cent of primary schools and 18 per cent of secondary schools reported having a sick bay/sanatorium/school clinic.
The study was conducted between December 2019 and January 2020 in 44 counties in Kenya among 380 schools.
The data collection tools included questionnaires that were administered electronically using Survey CTO software.
“Only 22 per cent of schools sampled had facilities for handling children with chronic illnesses, calling for enhanced support for learners with long-term health conditions,” the report says.
The survey found that only three per cent of the schools that responded had a health facility within the school compound, and 40 per cent of schools had a healthcare facility more than one kilometer from the school compound.
Nationally 72 per cent of sampled schools had guidelines for linkages during health referrals.
The percentage stood at 88 per cent for Secondary schools and 63 per cent for primary schools, 90 per cent among boarding schools, 67 per cent for day, and 83 per cent for mixed day and boarding schools having linkages for health referrals.
Of the 163-day schools sampled, only nine per cent had a healthcare worker while 60 per cent of the 20 boarding schools sampled had a healthcare worker.
Only one per cent of the sampled schools had a doctor, four per cent had a clinical officer and seven per cent had either a nurse or a Community Health Volunteer providing health services.
