Wednesday, February 10, 2010

10th February 2010, Wednesday – On the 8th February 2010, Monday (Afternoon), I attended “Healthy Lifestyle Workshop for Primary School Teachers” that was held at Health Promotion Center, Commonwealth Drive, Berakas. This was the first session for the school teachers throughout Brunei. There will be more sessions to be held this month and the coming months.

The objective of the workshop are to equip school teachers with specific health information related to diet, physical activity & the use of tobacco; to develop & share ideas on ways of communicating health messages in the curriculum; and to introduce teachers to available facilities and resources at the Health Promotion Center (HPC) to support health education.

According to the statistic, the main causes of deaths in Brunei in 2009 are cancer, heart disease, cerebrovascular disease (stroke), and diabetes. The risk factors that led to such diseases are unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity, and smoking.

It was found out that from the Integrated Health Screening Programme for the civil servants that 21.1% of civil servants are classed as obese (i.e those who has BMI more than 30) and 32.1% are classed as overweight (i.e those who has BMI between 25 and 30).
In addition, it was found out in 2008 that 14.1% of the school children are overweight and 12.9% are classed as obese.

Why bother? Obesity is a risk factor for many diseases, such Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, asthma & other respiratory problems, skin infections, and some types of cancer.

(Note: The information is from the workshop material)

The overview of the workshop was presented by Dr Hjh Norhayati Kassim, Head of Health Promotion Center. Then followed by a talk on healty diet by Norlinda Haji Naweh, Community Dietition. Pengiran Anuar Husaini bin Pengiran Haji Ramli, Health Education Officer then delivered a topic on “Dangers of Tobacco”. Lastly, Shahiran Sherifuddin Mohd Shahrani, Health Facilitating Officer, highlighted the important of physical activity.

After the talks, there was a group work to be done by the teachers entitled “Getting the message across to school children through the curriculum”.

The workshop of the day ended with the tour of Health Galleria, Resource Center, and Klinik Badan Sihat…. as well as some light refreshments.

Besides the school teachers, officials from the Curriculum Development Departments (Science Section) were also present at this workshop.

Some photos:









(Photos: Abdul Rashid Haji Tahir. Taken on 8th February 2010, Monday)

p/s: Need to reduce my BMI….the risks from obesity are very high at my current age.

Related links:

PeachPit (Pearson Education)

ANY COMMENTS, PLEASE SEND YOUR E-MAIL TO:

abdul_rashid.tahir@yahoo.com