This initiative has a positive impact on student's health

KOCHI: Providing drinking water in schools is not enough. Pediatricians say that children, especially girls, avoid drinking water due to lack of clean and adequate toilet facilities in the schools. This often leads to complaints of mild dehydration and in many cases urinary infection.

On an average, each day, a pediatrician gets to see one school student, who is brought to the outpatient department by parents with complaints of urinary infection. “Most of them are girls. When we ask them if they drink enough water at school, they reply in the negative. Although they carry a water bottle to school, they don’t drink water as they want to avoid going to the toilet at school,” said Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) former president, Dr S Sachidananda Kamath.

Children and teenagers need to consume approximately 1.5 to 3 litres of water daily. The quantity varies based on gender, age and weight. Mild dehydration can cause health issues such as headaches, irritability , poor physical performance and difficulty in learning. Students may also experience symptoms like fatigue and poor endurance. In the long term, chronic lack of fluids affects the kidneys, the liver, the brain and can lead to constipation .

“If we can focus on helping children drink more water - a low-cost, no-calorie beverage - we can improve their hydration status, which may allow many children to feel better throughout the day and do better in school” said pediatrician Dr M Narayanan.

International studies show that kids who do not drink water consume almost twice as many calories as kids who consumed water, as they would drink more than 10% of their daily calories from sugary drinks thereby increasing their risk of becoming overweight or obese.

“More than a lack of clean drinking water at schools, lack of adequate and clean toilets is the problem. No one, especially girls, want to drink water and then stand in a long queue all through the recess,” added Dr Narayanan.

