Incorporation of Ergonomics in School Health Promotion:The Sri Lankan Ezperience
Introduction School health promotion programs perform a vital role in ensuring school a safe environment for children and adolescents. Incompatible ergonomics impart negative impacts on schoolchildren. Inclusion of ergonomics as a component will cater for the holistic and need-based requisites of school health programs. Ergonomics in schools is still a strange concept in the South East Asian region. Sri Lanka, being a country with better health indices comparable to industrially developed countries, pioneered in the introduction of ergonomics in school health promotion. A situational analysis was carried out to delineate possible ergonomic strategies. Objectives To describe the distribution of selected ergonomic factors related to school-going early adolescents. To formulate feasible ergonomic solutions that could be incorporated into school health promotion programs. Method A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in Gampaha, a district representing wider spectrum of school children and facilities in Sri-Lanka. A representative sample of 1607 schoolchildren of 11-13 years selected using stratified multistage cluster sampling. A classroom was considered as a cluster and there were 55 clusters. Selected anthropometric dimensions of the children were measured. Measurements related to schoolbag, chair, desk and location of seating were taken and compared for ergonomic compatibility with anthropometric dimensions. Results There were 52％ male and 48％ female students from urban (31.7％) and rural (68.3％) schools. They carried books in backpacks (79.6％), shoulder bags (17.9％) and suitcases (2.3％). Mean weight of schoolbag was 3.72Kg. Mean schoolbag weight/body weight was 11.04％ (SD=3.88). A bag weighing >10％ of bodyweight was carried by 57.9％. Children were seated with a mean angle of 30.71 degrees (SD=19.67) and 398.04cm (SD=132.09) mean distance to blackboard. 23.3％ had to turn >45 degrees to see the blackboard. A standard chair with backrest without hand-rests was used by 95.6％. Regular use of backrest was reported by 12％. For 78.3％ an individual desk was provided. Desk surface was horizontal in 84.9％. A foot-rest was present in 82％ desks. Sitting area length of chairs did not match with buttock-popliteal length of child in 87.3％, A mismatch in seat height and popliteal height was observed in 79.8％ while legroom height of desk did not comply with popliteal height in 76.3％. Conclusions A majority of children carried a healthy bag model, backpack, which causes minimal physiological distress. Many children carried a schoolbag weighing above the international cut-off of 10％. More than 80％ of students were not provided with compatible chair/desk combination. Ergonomics related to school-going adolescents are unsatisfactory.
ILK Jayaratne DN Fernando
Community Physician, Child Health Unit, Family Health Bureau, Ministry of Healthcare and Nutrition, Senior Professor of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
国际会议
17th World Congress on Ergonomics(第十七届国际人类工效学大会)
北京
英文
1-6
2009-08-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）