Health Ministry Stages Extravaganza Sept. 10

The Ministry of Health will be observing Caribbean Wellness Day on Saturday, September 10 with a Health Extravaganza in Half-Way Tree square.

Speaking at a JIS ‘Think Tank’ on September 7, Director of Health Promotion and Education in the Ministry, Miss Takese Foga, said the Ministry would be partnering with numerous stakeholders to stage the day’s events.

“We will be addressing nutrition and healthy eating, so with our partner, Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), we’ll be doing healthy food sampling and showing how to do container gardening,” she said.

“There will be varied types of physical activity and we are partnering with the Jamaica Defence Force and Race Walk Jamaica to do activities that are creative,” Miss Foga added.

She said the aim is to show that physical activity can be fun and that there is at least one type of physical activity that persons can enjoy doing, noting that there will be competitions and demonstrations.

Miss Foga pointed out that in addition to the annual Wellness Day theme, ‘Love Your Body, Treat Your Body Right’, the subtheme for 2016 is ‘Healthy Children in Healthy Environments’.

“We will be having a Kiddies Zone to engage the children. We are packaging this event in a creative way to address the risk factors of non-communicable diseases in children and so we welcome all our children to come in. For every booth there will be ways in which we will engage our children, so that they will understand from an early age that it’s important to be practising healthy lifestyles,” she explained.

There will also be free health checks for blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol as well as eye screening, nutrition counselling, medical consultations and pap smears.

A special highlight of the day will be Minister of Health, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, preparing healthy meals on location.

The Day is observed across the Caribbean every year on the second Saturday of September.