The battle of the bulge is moving into the capital’s schools, with the announcement of a new pilot project being launched by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) – the School Health Education Project.
To begin later this month, UNICEF’s health education initiative aims to educate school children about the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle. Conducted in partnership with the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, SEHA Ambulatory Health Services and telecom company du, the project will run in two government secondary schools in each emirate, including schools in Al Ain and the Western Region.
The one-year programme will follow 18 schools in total and will initially diagnose the major issues regarding children’s health by conducting focus group discussions with school nurses and using information gathered from health authorities. Afterwards, caregivers will use hands-on learning techniques to teach children about the benefits of being healthy.
The initiative comes after increasingly worrying statistics regarding childhood obesity were revealed earlier this year. According to the Health Authority – Abu Dhabi, figures indicates that over thirty percent of students are overweight or obese. In addition, the survey also revealed that only 27.5 percent of students engage in physical activity for a total of one-hour every day.
“Through the School Health Education Project we hope to educate as many secondary school children as we can on the benefits of adopting a healthy lifestyle which contributes to the overall strategy of the health and education authorities in the UAE,” said Dr Ibrahim El-Ziq, Gulf area representative, UNICEF.
