International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | May 2017 | Vol 4 | Issue 5 Page 1436 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Ezeonu CT et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2017 May;4(5):1436-1441 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Health emergency preparedness: an assessment of primary schools in Abakaliki, South-Eastern Nigeria Chinonyelum Thecla Ezeonu 1 *, Clifford Onuorah Okike 2 , Maria Nwakaego Anyansi 3 , James Osaeloka Ojukwu 2 INTRODUCTION Any child can have a medical emergency in school. Schools are expected to anticipate and prepare to respond to a wide variety of emergencies. 1 Emergencies are often threatening to life and or property. They can occur anywhere, at home, at work or at school. Children and adults may experience medical emergency situations because of injuries, complications of chronic health conditions or unexpected major illnesses that occur in school. 2 Emergencies require urgent intervention, in order to save life or property or avoid worsening of damage. The sources of emergencies may be medical e.g. from injuries, complications of existing medical conditions such as hypoglycemia, acute severe asthma, convulsions or even epidemics such as cholera, meningitis or lassa fever or can be structural e.g., from collapsed buildings, ABSTRACT Background: Children spend a significant proportion of their day in school, thus pediatric emergencies such as exacerbation of medical conditions, accidental and intentional injuries are likely to occur. An estimate of 10 -25% of injuries occur while the children are at school. It is the legal responsibility of the schools to ensure the safety and well-being of the pupils/students and staff during school hours working towards prevention of accidents and being prepared for immediate solutions when the accidents occur. Methods: A cross sectional descriptive study of 31 registered primary schools in Abakaliki Metropolis. A prepared check list of facilities necessary for emergency care at schools derived from the school health programme evaluation scale was used for the assessment. Data was analyzed using the SPSS statistical package version 8, comparing findings in public schools with the private schools using Chi square. The level of significance was set at p<0.05. Results: A health room was available in 9.7% of schools exclusively private schools. Nurses, doctors and trained first aiders were found in 6.5%, 9.7% and 32.3% respectively of schools. First aid boxes were available in 80.6% of the schools but only 67.7% of the schools could offer first aid treatment at emergencies. None of the public schools had a school safety patrol or a fire extinguisher in contrast to the private schools. Conclusions: Schools, especially the public schools in Abakaliki metropolis are ill prepared for emergencies. Keywords: Schools, Health emergencies, Preparedness Department of Paediatrics, 1 Ebonyi State University, 2 Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Nigeria 3 Department of Nursing sciences, Ebonyi State University, Nigeria Received: 18 March 2017 Revised: 10 April 2017 Accepted: 11 April 2017 *Correspondence: Dr. Chinonyelum Thecla Ezeonu, E-mail: ctezeonu@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20171752