In a continuous awareness campaign, aimed at educating students on healthy living, Dubai Women’s College (DWC) Wellness Center and Dubai Health Authority (DHA) recently conducted a number of health awareness activities like Health Checkups, Healthy Nutrition, Breastfeeding Awareness and many more in celebration of the World Health Day. The event was inaugurated by Dr. Ahmed Kalban, CEO – Public Health Centers and Dr. Howard Reed, Director of DWC and Dr. Behjat Al Yousuf, Associate Director of DWC.
Dr. Hanan Ali Mubarak, Head of Community Health Services Program Section at DHA and her Tobacco Free Dubai Team gave a workshop on tobacco hazards, distributed leaflets and checked carbon monoxide levels by Smokalyser technique. Asia Jafar Al Zarouni, a Dietitian Specialist at DHA and her team provideed a Height, Weight, BMI, Blood Pressure, Blood Sugar and Cholesterol tests and educated DWC students and staff about the proper dieting measures. Nawal Karam, a DWC graduate who attended the event said “We are happy today to have such health activities in the college to help us maintain a healthy life style and healthy dieting for a better world.”
In addition, Dr. Fatema Al Olama and her team from the Maternity Care section at DHA gave students guidance on the importance of breastfeeding, its benefits and how to help working and studying mothers to continue breastfeeding.
DWC’s Student Service Coordinator and organizer of the event, Bassima Al Alyah commented “Today’s World Health Day celebration emphasizes on the importance of continuous health awareness to students and reinforce the cooperation between Dubai Women’s College and Dubai Health Authority. It is an opportunity to draw the students’ attention to major health
challenges in the UAE. It also focuses on promoting good health and encouraging students to follow a healthy living style, right selection of food ingredients, the importance of precautions and the proper measures of preventions through changing the patterns of their daily lives. It also clarifies the most dangerous patterns such as fast foods, lack of physical activities and unhealthy behaviors such as smoking.” “In recent years, there has been a clear observation on the steady increase in food-energy consumption, followed by an inactive life-style. This has given the occurrence of numerous heart diseases, obesity, diabetes, Osteoporosis and other major health problems” she added.
DWC is a pioneer in health-conscious education as it offers healthy food in the campus cafeteria, thus doing its part to combat diabetes and obesity in UAE. Moreover, DWC is the first in the HCT system to design a world-class Fitness Center with 1,200 students participating weekly in physical education classes.
