Little Doctors Teach their Peers about Rabies

Bangladesh has started to implement the concept of ‘Little Doctors’ for child To child (cTc) health education, with over 1.5 million Little Doctors now reaching more than 25 million students in over 100,000 primary schools.

Little Doctors are students ages 8 to 10 who undertake health education and other health related activities including health check ups and administration of drugs against intestinal worms. 

Starting in 2011 on a limited scale, it is gradually being scaled up to cover the whole country, and information on rabies control and prevention has recently been included in the program.

It is a multisectoral initiative lead by Communicable Disease Control (CDC) with Primary Education, Health Education Bureau, Social Welfare Department, FHI 360 (Family Health International), USAID, Save the Children, BRAC (a Bangladeshi NGO) and other partners. 

Concept of Little Doctors:

Children can play an important role in child to child education on hygiene, healthy life style, the prevention of diseases and promotion of health.

Through the "Little Doctors" other students will learn about health related matters and in the process of delivering education the "Little Doctors" themselves will strengthen their understanding and practice on those.

If even small portion of 25 million children or the Little Doctors adopt a healthy lifestyle and practice it throughout their lives, that will have huge positive impact in future health of the nation.                 

Formation and Functioning of ‘Little Doctor’:

Following guidelines, three students are selected as a Team of Little Doctors in January of each year for each section or class. The teams hold a health education session for the assigned class twice a month with educational material (Flipchart, Festoon & Leaflet), covering personal hygiene, sanitation, nutrition, rabies and dengue.

Other activities include Health Check –Ups and administration of drugs for de-worming. The trained teacher and Assistant Health Inspector (AHI) supervise and monitor the activity and guide them necessarily. 

During de-worming week, the little doctors provide information regarding worm infestation and the prevention of infestation and coordinate, document and administer drugs during de-worming week.

They report accounts of drug administration and any side-effects to the teacher, and they also motivate absentees and out of school children to take the de-worming drug.  

From January 2014, Little Doctors have started to perform twice yearly Health Check Ups of their fellow students, including recording height, weight and examining eye sight.

The information on Rabies tells the students what to do following a dog bite, including wash the wound with soap and water for 15 minutes and seek vaccination against rabies which is available at the district hospital.

The ‘Little Doctor’ program will create a huge number (> 16,50,000) little doctors each year, and build a leadership mentality and help to sustain the knowledge longer in their lives. It will promote the practice of de-worming in childrens’ lives as well as among their family members, and engage in other health related as well as other social activities, such as rabies prevention. 

The concept of ‘Little Doctors’ is great fun for the students and they like it. The stakeholders have demonstrated great interest and the concept now has a footing here in Bangladesh. If it can be implemented successfully it promises to have a positive health impact of the huge number of health compromised children of the country.

Contributed by Prof. Be-Nazir Ahmed, Public health and Emerging Infectious Specialist

Director, Disease Control, Bangladesh