General Health Services Sindh Workshop
Speakers at a two-day Consultative Workshop stressed the need of moti-vating peoples on health promotion by giving them healthy messages. The Consultative Workshop with multi-sector partners was organized by Directorate General Health Services Sindh in collaboration with World Health Organization (WHO) and MoH Islamabad recently at a local hotel in Karachi to agree on the key approaches and health topics to be address under health promotion Mazhar Nisar, Health Education Advisor highlighted the objectives of the workshop and stressed upon Alliance Building and Networking with public and private sector and Building a team with health promotion at the Provincial and District level. He said that that everybody is a health promoter. When health-edu-cation and health-promotion programs are being developed, the audience’s values need to be considered.
Dr. A. D. Sajnani, Executive District Officer, City District Government Karachi, on the occasion said that Health Education is the most important component of public health which is the backbone of any health services.
He further said that, few decades back, smoking and cigar smoking considered the symbol of elite but nowadays people know that smoking is deadly in any form and there is need to raise awareness about hazards of smoking.
The success of health education campaign in recent outbreak of dengue was enormous. Media plays most important role in our lifestyles and it has a lot of influence on the masses.
Abdul Sattar Chaudhry, WHO Technical Officer/ Health Education Consultant, Ministry of Health on the occasion said that Health Promotion includes; public health education; community development; policy, legislation and regulation; prevention of communicable diseases and non communicable diseases including injury, violence, and mental problems and Promotion of healthy lifestyles.
He further said Health Promotion and Education deals with major challenges and determinants to health prevention of lifestyle related non communicable diseases i.e. heart ailments, cancer, diabetes, mental health,hypertension and reduction of risk factors. Health pro- motion is also an integral and central part for control of communicable diseases.
The participants were asked to develop plan of action to implement the health promotion activities at provincial and District level.
In the end, Ms. Seerat Shahina, Deputy Director (Health Education) Direc-torate General Health Services Sindh offered vote of thanks. She said that the delivery and acceptance of healtheducation and health promotion programs are influ-enced by personal, religious, environmental, cultural, political, and economic factors, all of which help create and are affected by individual and societal values.
Joint Programs will result in: Pooling of resources, wisdom and efforts, avoiding duplication Cost, time and effort, Better coordination, Teaming up.