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Health ambassadors to promote healthy life-style
The earlier one starts a healthy lifestyle, the more effective it will be on disease prevention, Deputy Secretary for Health and Welfare, Mrs Doris Ho, said today (Saturday).
Speaking at the Second Health Ambassador Graduation Ceremony, Mrs Ho said studies had shown that there was a close relationship between many chronic diseases and lifestyle.
She paid tribute to the Health Ambassador Training Programme which is designed to provide health information for different spectrums of people like women and students.
Mrs Ho noted that after completing the course, the health ambassadors would take up the responsibility of delivering health messages in their neighbourhood so as to promote the health status of the community as a whole.
Also speaking at the ceremony, the acting Director of Health, Dr T A Saw, pointed out that the success of health education was not only rested with health professionals' efforts, but also on public's enthusiastic participation.
"Disease prevention is better than treatment, and health education is disease prevention's crucial key," he said.
He was confident that the health ambassadors would live up to their mission in health promotion and cultivation of a healthy community by bringing the health message to their peers, their districts and even the community.
He noted that during the last year, the health ambassadors had held some 100 health educational activities, and the participants totalled 30,000. This fully reflected each and every health ambassador's effort and success.
A total of 795 health ambassadors graduated today, including 555 students from about 110 schools and 240 women.
The Health Ambassador Programme is an innovative step over the conventional reliance on health activities rendered by health professionals.
The concept is to draw community support to and participation in spreading health messages.
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