From online assignments to compulsory masks, Ggm schools deal with challenges

GURUGRAM: Though the ‘hazardous' air pollution has forced the district administration to close schools again, there have been occasions when schools have functioned in ‘poor' air categories.

With the health of children the most vulnerable in these times, it has become a major challenge for an educational institution in the city to keep their students safe.

To deal with the challenge, the schools in Gurugram have restricted the physical activities and have made the wearing of masks compulsory.

Moreover, being lenient with the students who are forced to not attend schools, the teachers and the management are relying on online assignments for imparting education to the students.

Owing to the weather conditions, the concentration of all these poisonous substances is highest in the morning, the time when most of the school children have to go to their schools.

Besides hazardous levels of pollution, the thick layer of smog also enveloped the city which has reduced the visibility and is causing further problems for the school children.

What makes the matter worse for parents in Gurugram is that there is a large number of children who are going to schools in Delhi. Long distance travel and longer duration of exposure, however, make the health of these children extremely vulnerable. While the parents of these children admit that is a challenge for them to send their kids to Delhi, lack of choices and compulsion leave them with fewer options.

On the occasion of Children's day, most of the schools in Gurugram also took to social media to highlight the dangerous situation to which the students are subjected to.

For three days in a row the air quality index in Gurugram is in the hazardous category with the PM2.5 breaching the 400 micrograms per cubic meter mark.

The levels of particulate matter (PM) 2.5 have serious health implications such as asthma, bronchitis, chronic respiratory symptoms including, shortness of breath, painful breathing, and premature deaths as these tend to get

lodged in the lung and can even enter the bloodstream.

“The effects of air pollution on children are way more than the effect on adults, because children body is growing and children lungs are immature. Pollution effects on children are acute and surface out long term complications on their bodies. Nowadays, children are more prone to coughing, wheezing, chest congestion, cold. A child recovers from one and gets the other problem much quicker. Children are now prone to so many allergies at a very young age that they have to carry these problems for the rest of their

life,” said Dr. Shaguna Mahajan, a city-based pediatrician.