 |
| presons who attended the opening ceremony are having their pressure taken |
Charlestown Nevis (October 6, 2006) -- The Ministry of Health in the Nevis Island Administration, on Wednesday 4 launched the first in a series of health programmes, geared toward the awareness of illnesses that affects the life span of men.
The official ceremony was held at the Gingerland Health Center compound where a cross section of men, old and young, from the private and public sectors as well as school children attended the event.
Dubbed "Men's Wellness Programme", the event was to target men to utilize the facilities that are available to them. Delivering brief remarks, Dr Judy Nisbett noted that besides the usual health care that the community health centers provided, the focus for the programme was primary and secondary prevention.
"We (health officials) play a critical role in keeping our communities and by extension the entire population of Nevis healthy. This project is therefore important and timely. We all know that health seeking habits of men leave a lot to desire. Those habits are generally poor."
According to the Medical Officer, the project would be piloted at the Gingerland Health Center and after an evaluation; it would be extended to the other centers. She hoped that with the new initiative, men would become more aware of the importance of keeping healthy.
 |
| Minister of Health calling on men to take better care of themselves during the launch of the men wellness programme |
Supervisor of Community Health Nursing, Genevie Daniel, expressed that even though statistic shows life expectancy of 70 years for men and 72 years for women, she also expressed that the gap was not a wide one which signified that women were living longer than men.
"The reasons are so obvious. Men do not utilize the health system because most of the time, their health problems are in the advance stage before medical assistance is sought," said Nurse Daniel.
She called on the men to take better care of themselves, saying, "There is only one you and only one life, live it healthy."
Minister of Health, the Hon Hensley Daniel said that the Ministry saw the programme as a redirection of the country's resources from treatment to prevention. He attributed that to the fact that the ministry was looking at the cost of maintaining certain persons who are diabetic, hypertensive etc. etc.
"By using the men wellness clinic, the cost of health care would go down," he said. He called on the gathering to do a few things that he believed could assist with the prevention of health care.
He pointed out, begin to eat fresh fruit and vegetables from the garden; reduce stress and anger; get regular checks; increase the amount of exercise; play some sports and or get involve in some curricular activities to be more relax and to support the implementation of a national health care scheme to be introduced.
~~Adz:Left~~Dr Chandy Jacobs, District Medical Officer also gave brief remarks while Nurse Lorraine Archibald gave the vote of thanks. The ceremony was chaired by Eric Evelyn who expressed his pleasure to see so many men in the audience.
He told them that it was extremely important that they take care of their health adding, "We as men must try to change the conception that healthy living is a woman thing or children thing. It is everybody thing."
