(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) The government is working on strategies that address child protection in a broader way.
One of the measures towards this goal is having social workers or psychologists in Muscat's schools. Schools all across Oman will be covered in future officials have said.
A national conference held in Sur last year focused on the various types of chid abuse and pathways for child protection. It was jointly organised by the ministries of Health and Social Development.
Dr Samiya Salim al Hattaly acting director of health affairs in the Ministry of Health (MoH) in South Sharqiyah said 'Training concerned persons on detecting and reporting such cases and the proper way of handling them was discussed.'
She added that child protection measures of government and non government sector organisations need to be standardised.
'It is important to develop an Omani definition of child abuse that would address some culturally accepted behaviour such as traditional medicines and harsh physical and verbal disciplinary methods' Dr Samiya said.
Dr Muna al Sadoon associate professor child health department College of Medicine and Health Sciences Sultan Qaboos University said the Ministry of Education (MoE) has a system of having social workers/psychologists in schools in Muscat.
'The plan is to cover all schools in the future' she said also calling for increased intervention and stressed on the Ministry of Social Development's role in family and child protection.
'At the Sur conference we highlighted the challenges facing the existing child protection system in Oman such as shortage of required subspecialties in all regions (child protection paediatricians paediatric psychiatrists forensic doctors psychologists social workers police and legal personal with experience in dealing with child protection).
'There is inability to provide the services within one institute as the existing system requires mobilising the patients to different places to receive the services' said Dr Muna adding 'Absence of guidelines for child protection results in variability of the service provided.'
Like in many parts of the world child abuse remains a matter of concern in Oman too with experts calling for increased intervention as cases reported also include deaths.
MoH's 2013 data shows that 131 cases of child abuse were registered that year according to Dr Muna.
'In 2012 26 cases were reported from Sultan Qaboos University Hospital alone. Between 2007 and December 2011 we reported 62 cases of maltreated children to the ministry with some fatalities' Dr Muna told Muscat Daily.
'There were many children admitted with Shaken Baby Syndrome besides other forms of physical abuse and also emotional abuse' she said adding that there have been no cases of sexual abuse. 'Intracranial bleeding (bleeding within the skull) celebral edema and a few cases of retinal haemorrhage were treated by us in 2013.'
According to her poor quality of supervision on all levels has been the main concern.
Dr Adel Mohammed Abdullah head of school health department in MoH South Sharqiyah said that teachers should take the lead in identifying victims as they have daily contact with the children and could pick up the red flags of child abuse.
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