MoA, MoH team up to provide health services to citizens

In observance of Occupational Safety and Health Month 2022, the Agriculture Ministry in collaboration with the Health Ministry on Friday hosted a health fair at the Ministry’s Regent Street office. The fair saw a turnout from many medical professionals, ready to assist the public.

The staff of both Ministries and members of the public were able to benefit from a range of medical services such as blood pressure testing, dental check-ups, eye examinations, Body Mass Index (BMI) evaluations, and much more. Persons were also able to speak with a physician and obtain prescriptions for medications, some of which were available at the fair free of cost.

Diekola Gittens, Nutrition Community Officer of the Ministry of Health’s Food Policy Division related that the fair was a well thought out initiative as it created the opportunity for members of the public to come out and know more about their nutritional status, and according to Gittens, this knowledge is very important.
“It’s a great initiative because we get to come out and deal with our colleagues in the agriculture sector and we also have persons from the public coming. So, it’s good because we’re here giving nutritional advice to persons and we’re also doing the body mass index, that’s the BMI testing, where we test persons to see where they fall on the scale, whether they have the right weight for their height, overweight or underweight or even obese or extremely obese, and we get to counsel them to bring them to the healthy weight we want them in because being overweight and obese puts you at risk for developing several chronic complications like diabetes, high blood pressure, someone can suffer from a stroke, heart attack, things like those,” she said.
She further highlighted that a “a person’s nutritional status determines their health and as we all know the nation’s health is the nation’s wealth, so we want a healthy nation so we can have a wealthy nation.”
Gittens and her team were successfully able to test and advise the nutritional status of about 50 persons who turned up at the event.
District Medical Officer (acting), Dr Alana Ernest applauded both Ministries for their effort in catering to the health status of the citizens. To this end, she encouraged more Ministries and companies to take the mantle and follow in the footsteps of the Agriculture and Health Ministries.
“I think it’s a great initiative, in fact, more Ministries or other companies and organisations should adopt the same habit because that is exactly what we want, we want people to live healthy, we want people to practice healthy lifestyles and we want to spread awareness of certain sicknesses and diseases. So, if persons can adopt or actually have more of these outreaches, we can actually be able to reach out to certain people and spread awareness by such,” Dr Ernest said.
Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha and other Heads of Departments also participated in the event. Minister Mustapha encouraged persons to ensure they have regular visits to the doctor and to eat healthy to ensure they maintain long, healthy lives.