CitCo promotes healthy life styles with fair
If you’re not feeling well you go see the doctor, right? Well, in a narrow sense, yes, but these days health is viewed in a much broader way … and today, as News Five’s Kendra Griffith reports, the Belize City Council reached out to send that message to the public.
Mark Bernard, Senior Public Health Inspector
“Where do I get help with my pet? Where do I get my blood pressure checked without going to like say the Karl Heusner? Where can I get a quick glucose test? Where can I get information on AIDS?”
Those were only some of the questions that residents could have had answered at the Belize City Council’s Second Annual Health Expo, which featured booths from thirty government departments and N.G.O.s.
Caroline Bowen, Belize Humane Society
“Today what we’d like to do is to educate the children on the different things that the Belize Human Society offers to the Belize City area, promoting our new animal shelter at mile four and a half on the Western Highway, located on the City Council compound. We do, do adoptions and rehabilitations out of that shelter. We also want to promote the hurricane preparedness to make children and parents understand that when they do have a hurricane coming, you can’t leave your dog tied up on the stairs that you do have to have a plan to evacuate your anima as well.”
Annie Rose Yamaguchi, Veterinarian
“Kids take the message home and that’s why it is important to educate them on how to treat their pets because you see how educate and how civilized a society is when they treat the weakest link, which is animals, well. Children and animals are the weakest.”
The Belize Humane Society is also working with the City Council and the Public Health Department to hold campaigns against rabies and to promoting spaying and neutering.
Wayne Usher, City Councillor
“What you are seeing here is also to send and increase the message that “Cleanliness if the key to a healthier Belize.” That captures the entire theme of why we are out here. We want to impart this knowledge that you must clean up in all the different ways we can.”
Zenaida Moya, Belize City Mayor
“If we all agree that our health is important, then that is accepting that we each have a role to play in good public health. All we are asking at the Belize City Council is that we each do our part to make Belize healthier than it is today.”
And one to make Belize healthier is to improve nutrition, which was what the K.H.M.H. authority’s display was all about.
Marie White, Dietary Department, K.H.M.H.
“At the hospital where we work, we try to implement these kinds of stuff so that people could know more or less what they are eating as a diabetic and so on. For a diabetic person we normally introduce the brown rice, so that is why we have, instead of the white rice, the brown, toast bread, wheat bread mostly instead of the white bread.”
And whether it’s eating healthier or getting more exercise, Mayor Zenaida Moya is challenging Belizeans to implement lifestyle changes.
Zenaida Moya
“Take the information that is being provided to you, but take the message seriously. Leave here today not only with more knowledge, but make a decision to apply the knowledge you’ve gained today. The individual reason and the decision we make today may be the one decision that gives us a longer tomorrow.”
Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.
