INZ in cooperation with local institutions strengthens biosafety in kindergartens

(Patria) - The Institute for Health and Food Safety Zenica (INZ) continued its assistance and cooperation with educational institutions in the Zenica-Doboj Canton, but also wider, during September.

After preparation, consultation, and then visits and assistance in establishing biosafety measures in primary and secondary schools and faculties of this canton, the second phase of biosafety measures supervision in preschool institutions of ZDK began this week. Namely, intensive cooperation has already been established with a number of kindergartens in the canton to create conditions for children to return to kindergartens.

In this phase, a set of documents titled "Kindergartens and COVID-19" was delivered to all preschool institutions at the end of last week, which contains the methodology for developing a plan for establishing and maintaining a biosafety system in preschool institutions in the context of COVID-19 (self-control plan or crisis preparedness and response plan for the occurrence of COVID-19, defined by the Order of the Crisis Staff/Headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Health of 20.08. - in Chapter VII - Orders for educational institutions, point 3).

This set of documents has also been available on the Institute's website www.inz.ba since today.

- It is necessary to emphasize that no plan or system is ideal and it is impossible to completely prevent the transmission of infection, but together we can do everything in our power to minimize the risk, learn from experience, and continuously improve the biosafety system. The teams of our Service for School Hygiene will visit all public and private preschool institutions during the next week and will act in an advisory capacity to increase biosafety in preschool institutions together with the representatives of the institutions, states the head of the INZ Service for School Hygiene, doc. dr. Nino Hasanica.

The INZ requested that all institutions "return" their plans, developed based on these documents and guidelines, to the Institute, which will be reviewed, analyzed, and qualitatively supplemented in cooperation with each institution individually.

- Therefore, INZ teams are starting a new round of visits to public and private kindergartens in ZDK from this week. I must emphasize that all measures, plans, and cooperation are in line with our legal obligations and are directed towards preschool and school institutions in the Zenica-Doboj Canton, but we have made all documents publicly available to all similar institutions in FBiH and BiH, because the measures they need to implement are universal and the documents can be a good basis for their plans, states Hasanica, adding that they have already had contacts with institutions in several cantons of FBiH.