AMMAN — With the beginning of each academic year, the suffering of students with
diabetes is renewed when their families enroll them in certain schools that
they accuse of failing to take measures to deal with these children.
اضافة اعلان
Parents of diabetic students, members of the
Diabetic Children’s Mothers Association, complain that school cadres are not
trained to deal with students with diabetes.
Those interviewed by
Jordan News say that their
children are discriminated against by not being able to enroll in any school,
and that schools are not sufficiently informed about the basic needs of these
students.
Lina Al-Sbeih, association spokesperson, said that
“at the beginning of each academic year, parents make the same complaint”,
stressing that the problem is not new, and every year “parents suffer from
school principals’ refusal to accept their children on grounds that they need
special care”.
Sbeih said that one of the officials at the
Ministry of Education had pledged to follow up on the matter four years ago, “promising
to take appropriate measures in this regard to alleviate the suffering of the
students’ families, but no real steps were taken in this regard”.
“Sometimes, parents face certain challenges when
their children suffer from low or high blood sugar when at school, and have to
come to school to give their children an insulin injection and follow up on
their health conditions because the school administration is afraid to provide
those children their needs due to lack of knowledge, or to avoid
accountability,” she said.
Ibrahim’s mother, who refused to give her full name,
and has two children with diabetes, said that when she decided to enroll her
5-year- old son in a public school, was told that the school could not
accommodate him due to overcrowding and lack of adequate supervision of
diabetic children.
“I was told that the school does not have a nurse to
deal with high and low sugar level. Therefore, I decided to enroll my son in a
private school as the teacher there had experience in dealing with diabetic
cases,” she told
Jordan News.
Rama Jameel, whose daughter started suffering from
the disease in the fourth grade, told
Jordan News that “education is available
for children who have no health problems. As for children with a specific
disease, they suffer, and are discriminated against”.
She said that the “state must protect diabetic
children’s right to learn and should also protect them from discrimination”.
Education Ministry spokesman Ahmad Al–Masaafeh told
Jordan News that “those students must be accepted. The ministry obliges schools
to accept them because they have the right to learn”.
“The school’s principal, or the education counselor,
must have a list with the names of those students and give a copy to the
teachers, too, so that they get the special treatment they need,” he added.
Masaafeh stressed the need to educate teachers about
some diseases and spread awareness among students themselves, too.
He said that “the ministry is currently working on
developing an open EMIS platform, which records certain information about students,
including their height, weight, and sight test.”
“We will add a new field that shows the number of
students with diabetes for the purposes of conducting studies and research, and
developing the necessary operational plans,” he added.
Masaafeh said that if a diabetic student’s condition
worsens, “he is transferred to the nearest health center, as there are no
nurses in schools”.
Director of the Education Department at the
Education Ministry Nabil Hanatqa said that there were plans and workshops for schools
personnel to deal with diabetic students.
“A nurse will be appointed for each directorate to
deal with this category. There will certainly be a way to deal with such
conditions,” he told
Jordan News.
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