Orphanage managers and orphans often disregard their health. They think that they are fine as long as they look healthy. To enhance their awareness of health in an orphanage, students of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) conducted Go-Care.
Go-Care refers to a community caring of orphans’ health and it is a community service of Student Creativity Program (PKM) organized for a month (April-May) at Orphanage of Miftahul Jannah, Bantul. The PKM group consists of Farhah Kamilah, Syifa Aulia, Retha Rizky, Fahrul Azmy, and Rahma Nur.
In an interview on Thursday (7/6), Rahma Nur told that Go-Care focuses on promoting health for the orphans at Miftahul Jannah. “The orphans look healthy, but the fact is that they seldom take a bath or their teeth are dirty,” she told.
Rahma mention the materials delivered in the Go-Care were Clean and Healthy Living Behavior, First Aid Promotion, Health Education on Bullying, mental health screening for children, and medical check-up for children. The promotion also engaged a lecturer of Department of Nursing, namely Santi Wardaningsih, S.Kep., Ners. M.Kep., Jiwa., Ph.D.
“We also cooperated with Department of Health and Social in Bantul since both departments also had had a plan to hold the promotion at the orphanage. Thus, this program is entirely supported by the department. We also collaborated with a community health center (puskesmas) near the orphanage. There were two doctors and a dentist giving the medical treatment,” mentioned Rahma.
Furthermore, Rahma expected that the program can be carried out in other orphanages. “After the program, the awareness of the importance of maintaining health of the orphanages managers and orphans’ parents was enhanced. They are also expected to understand the orphans psychologically since many of managers and parents often punished the orphans because of taking other people’s stuffs. In fact, they had asked permission or they did it to take other people’s attention. The circumstance showed that they need affections from people around them,” she asserted.
