Dental Tribune
Jul 22, 2009
by Daniel Zimmermann, DTI

The Fit for School initiative in the Philippines began in 1998 as a small-scale project in Mindanao, one of the southern Philippine islands, incorporating 20 schools and focusing on oral-health education and dental treatment. Since then, it has developed into a registered NGO committed to supporting government and non-government agencies in conceptualising, implementing, monitoring and evaluating school health programmes. Dental Tribune International Group Editor Daniel Zimmermann spoke with Dr Bella Monse, a former dentist and now consultant of the German Development Corporation (GTZ) in the Health and Nutrition Section of the Department of Education in the Philippines, about the programme and how it is helping to improve the oral health status of children throughout the Asia Pacific region.

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InWent D+C Article
June 2009

[ By Lotte Schneider, Bella Monse and Konrad Obermann ]

Fit For School (FFS) is a programme that ensures that children in government-run elementary schools wash their hands with soap every day, brush their teeth with fluoride toothpaste and are de-wormed every six months. To implement the programme, the education and health sectors of the Philippines are pooling efforts.

Fit For School is also the name of the Philippine NGO that supervises the programme. Its work is supported financially and with human resources by InWent, GTZ, CIM and the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. Because it is simple, effective and in line with global and national health policies, FFS is successful. Its acceptance was boosted considerably by a campaign run by various UN organisations and multinational soap manufacturers to mark Global Handwashing Day (see also Monse et al, E + Z/D+C, November 2008, S. 434f.).

The programme fits neatly into the structures of the centralised education sector and is thus easy to implement. The schools cooperate. What is more difficult is the funding and procurement of the materials by the local governments. Local education authorities (Schools Divisions) report to central government. They are responsible for implementation. The health sector, on the other hand, is decentralised, so soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and de-worming tablets are financed and procured by provincial authorities.

InWent D+C Article
November 2008

[ By Bella Monse, Habib Benzian and Ralf Panse ]

Primary health care is essential to improve the living conditions of poor people, as the WHO’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health emphasised in a recent flagship report ­(CSDH, 2008). Launching the report, Margret Chan, the WHO’s director general, stressed the relevance of preventive action. Pointing to escalating health-care cost she said: “We simply cannot afford the way we go about doing health care nowadays without tackling and doing more prevention.”

Schools are a good starting point for preventive action. During the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000, the WHO agreed with UNICEF, UNESCO and the World Bank to cooperate on promoting and implementing health programmes in schools. As a guideline, they launched the Focusing Resources on Effective School Health (FRESH) framework, which recommends focusing on interventions that can be implemented everywhere, even in resource-poor schools of low- and middle-income countries.

The Fit for School Programme in the Philippines has been awarded with the P&G/Oral-B Award for Paediatric Dentistry and Prevention 2009 during the annual congress of the International Association for Paediatric Dentistry in Munich. This award is given to scientists who have done research or developed innovative concepts to improve oral health in the frame of general health.

The Philippines is a country of 7107 islands in the South Chinese Sea. Seven hundred of these islands are inhabited. According to the latest census in 2000 the project population in 2005 was 85.3 million. 1 Only 52% of the population lives in rural areas, where the main sources of income are farming and fishing. 2 Due to intensive migration from rural to urban areas and due to fast growing populaion, cities are expanding with all known problems of rapid urbanization such as over crowded housing, lack of clean water and proper sanitation.