Kadim Al-Abbady, Hamid Y Hessian, Mohamed W Alaam
Background: Dubai has well recognized hot and humid weather during the period extended from May up to October (6) months out of each the year. Which put the entire population at the risk of exposure to heat stress when they are practicing outdoor activities during their routine work at their workplaces every day? Furthermore, the kids are most fragile segment of population borne to develop heat stress incidents if measures to avoid such exposure have not been put in place properly Objectives: To assess the capacity building module on heat stress among Dubai school’s teachers, to study assess the extent of trainee’s response to heat stress at their facilities.
Methodology: Enrolment and follow up of trainee’s cohort from Dubai schools within capacity building module on heat stress management at workplace has been carried out on a total of 57 teachers and nurses working at Dubai private school’s physical education teachers and science teachers a long with school nurses. Well-developed capacity building module has been prepared and accredited by School Health department and public health department included theoretical part on heat stress and its related sequences in terms of mortalities and morbidities, as well as an approach to prevention and control, followed by practical demonstration and on life training sessions on steps of managements and levels of response. One full day training coverage along with initial written and verbal assessment and final written and verbal assessment based on scoring and scaling measurements. The training exercise has been standardized with the best practice training modules applied worldwide.
Results: The study reflected that about 50.8% of the total contributors to the heat stress capacity building module were school’s teachers whom having direct supervision responsibilities with outdoor student’s activities, and 15% of the trainees were teachers of physical education, in total of 65% of the trainees were school teachers. The study showed that about 22% of the enrolment in capacity building was other school staff including administrators and other schools operating staff, the grant total of the trainees was 87.8%. The current study concludes that 7% of the total participant who are not ever limits outdoor activities which is in the coolest part of the day associated towards before capacity building program and 35.1% of the participants never carrying out a heat stress awareness program in your school, about 33.3% were un able to recognize and never seen a child with signs and symptoms of Heat stress in school. About 29.9% never received any training or awareness on heat stress, 5.3% never applied preventive measures/ procedures against heat stress in their schools.68.4% they were in favour of giving cold soda drinks to prevent heat and 61.4% were in favour of giving hot tea/coffee to prevent heat stress. The study showed improvement in heat stress management score among the participant in relation to (When children are playing outside in hot and humid weather the recommended drink to give). (I would call 999, if I see the child's body is recognition of high air temperature. If a child gets unconscious while playing outside, immediately give cold water) and recognition of signs of heat stress adequately).
Conclusion: Workers have been suffering from illness related to heat because increasing heat exposure is becoming the challenges to them. However, the extreme hot environments are very dangerous to workers, who exposed to extreme heat. They are at high risked of the heat stress. The workers are unknown about heat exposer from the workplace and high influence of heat, so they are suffered from the underreporting of heat illnesses. Meanwhile, the lack of awareness about heat exposure associated with increase the risk of work- related injuries.
Recommendations: As heat stress can be lethal and it is 100% preventable using common sense, thus developing competent school based heath stress prevention and management capacity building module at school’s
