Health Minister Dina Akkelidou yesterday confirmed plans to promote and increase awareness of healthy lifestyle issues within schools. The drive follows reports that more and more children are leading progressively unhealthier lives, with a large percentage of today’s youth suffering from obesity, she said.
“We aim to enlighten children on healthy lifestyle matters as a whole and to promote a healthy way of life, including information on food, exercise and why to avoid habits that have a negative effect on health such as drug abuse and alcohol,” said Akkelidou.
The minister told the Sunday Mail these topics would mostly be taught within the school curriculum, but that plans were being made to drive the message home during outside school hours as well.
She said: “We plan to start the campaign as soon as possible because we are very worried about our children. We already have some activities planned in light of this new scheme which will announce shortly.”
Akkelidou also made reference to a separate study being carried out by the Child’s Health Foundation and said the foundation could be used to help in promoting in the ministry’s healthy lifestyle campaign.
In fact, on Friday the chairman of the foundation, Dr Michalis Tornaritis, told reporters a preliminary study on anorexia nervosa in children and teenagers had already revealed worrying results.
But, over and above the foundation’s anorexia programme, the foundation, in collaboration with the University of Crete, had gathered material to be given to teachers so that schools could intervene, said the Cyprus News Agency (CNA). To be effective in this intervention, Tornaritis said schools had been given CD-ROM material on nutritional education to be taught in home economics class. Efforts were also being made to introduce materials on health education into primary and nursery schools as well.
Tornaritis said health education was not limited to nutrition, but also includes education on personal relationships, behaviour, violence, and means of expression verbally without resorting to violence and delinquency in teenagers.
As for the study on anorexia nervosa, Tornaritis said it had already entered its second phase, but that the preliminary results were unpleasant, revealing 0.78 per cent of girls and 0.15 per cent of boys suffered from the serious eating disorder. During the first phase the study had examined over 60,000 primary school children and 5,000 teenagers, but it had been abruptly cut short. According to Tornaritis the programme had to be started up again, otherwise children’s health was at risk of worsening due to today’s way of life, said CNA. He said the study had also revealed that a lot of work is needed to help improve youngsters’ lifestyle habits.
The Health Ministry and Foundation have yet to meet despite the latter’s persistence to do so, reported CNA.
