The Supreme Council for Health Helps in Increasing Health Awareness

The Supreme Council for Health recently saw the conclusion of “Healthy Steps to Doha” programme, initiated in association with Supreme Education Council (SEC) to help increase health awareness and combat child obesity in schools.

“Obesity has become one of the major epidemics with the latest statistics from World Health Organization showing one billion people as obese and childhood obesity tripling over the last 30 years. Worldwide, approximately 22 million children under the age of five are obese,” said H E Abdullah bin Khalid Al Qahtani, Minister of Public Health and General Secretary of the SCH.

“Qatar strives to provide all the possibilities and means to protect public health by promoting various programmes, improving supervision of food and medicine, and developing and implementing strategies to raise awareness of health and dissemination of sound and effective practices,” the minister said. The healthy steps programme in Qatar was implemented in collaboration with a New York-based programme “Healthy Steps to Albany. The teams from Abu Obaida Independent Preparatory School, Rouqaya Preparatory School and Al Jazeera Academy underwent rigorous health education lectures, healthy cooking demonstrations and physical activities and games which were converted into steps around Doha.

The programme was aimed at supporting teachers to teach students about nutrition science and healthy food. It encouraged students to adopt a healthy lifestyle by eating healthy and exercising regularly. Parents were also encouraged to follow suit and support their children in living better and healthier lifestyles.