Civil Servants Fighting Non-Communicable Diseases Through Sporting Activities
Working all day sitting on chair is not life style that Malawi Civil Servants would like to go on with, but physical exercises and some sort of sporting activity often times is new life style that they want to stick to from now on because they believe that a healthy workforce is a great resource to national development.
This is a rationale the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Ministry of Sports and Youth Development lunch “Sports for Health Initiative” at Civo Stadium in Lilongwe on Friday 6th March 2015, where various sporting activities including, aerobics, football and netball are part of the event.
The core motivation of this initiative says Felix Linje, Chairperson for Sports for Health Initiative Committee is to protect themselves from some of non-communicable diseases that are continuing to attack people because of being inactive in sporting activities.
“We have organized ourselves starting with Ministries in Civil Service and we are hoping to go out to Public Office Organisations. This initiative (Sports for Health) starts with promoting healthy life styles and sporting activities in order to prevent non-communicable diseases and all diseases exacerbated by inactivity like high blood pressure, cancer and diabetes.”
He explained “We observed that many people who are working do not have time to involve themselves in sporting activities. Most of us we spend a lot of time during the week doing our work, and in weekends is time that we feel that we might want to rest. No physical exercises there.”
“What we are trying to do is to make sure that Ministries have their own wellness Committees to encourage officers engaging in sporting activities so that they start to at look sports for the prevention of other health related diseases.” said Sports for Health Chairperson
Linje revealed that very few government workers are in sporting clubs or do some physical exercises regularly. And said, though some government departments and ministries have their own sports clubs, still very handful of those working in government play for their teams.
“Normally when we have these football clubs within Ministries most of the times you find that they are competitive they are bringing in people from outside the working station, very often it is young boys who play for their team. He said
“But what we are looking for by having this initiative is that every Civil Servant should have opportunity to engage in some physical activities, so this should not be competitive but encourage everyone to take part in physical activities while knowing that doing such is not just for fun but for prevention of diseases”
Linje has assured that Sports for Health Initiative will be a quarterly event where various messages of lifestyle related communicable and non-communicable diseases will be delivered to the public servants. He urged the general public to participate in their events so that they also hear such important health messages.
Cancer Association of Malawi joins the launch of Sports for Health Initiative to raise awareness messages of Cancer and some Medical professionals were at the event conducting free testing for Breast Cancer.
Linje says the initiative during its upcoming events, will be raising awareness massages on other non-communicable diseases like diabetes and sugar.
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