PRIMARY school Science teachers gathered yesterday to develop and share ideas on ways to communicate health messages through the school curriculum in a healthy lifestyle workshop conducted by officers from the Health Promotion Centre.
The workshop, which was attended by 50 Year Four teachers, focused on suggesting ideas for getting the message of living a healthy lifestyle to schoolchildren. All suggestions will be forwarded to health directors for consideration.
Participants were given an overview on the rationale of the workshop, which was based on reducing the number of cancer, heart diseases, stroke and diabetes, which were listed as the main causes of death in Brunei last year.
Obesity was also identified, with 21.1 per cent of civil servants classed as obese while another 32.1 per cent as overweight.
Health Education Officer Pg Anuar Husaini Pg Hj Rambli’s presentation focused on informing the schoolteachers on the dangers of smoking. He said that “the impact of the contents of a cigarette are more serious to children because their lungs are still developing”. He added: “Most lung cancer patients were not smokers and are secondary or tertiary smokers”.
Health Facilities Officer Shahiran Sherifuddin Mohd Shahrani said that physical activity is any action that uses energy from the body.
“We are not aiming to increase exercise because in Brunei we are so far from it, but we are going to try to increase physical activities.”
One should start by incorporating physical activities into their daily life, such as walking to a store which is less than five minutes away or taking the stairs instead of an elevator in a building, he said.
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