The Port Mourant Health Centre is taking health care delivery to a whole new level with the launch of a Home Nutrition Project for the community aimed at teaching residents to make healthy food choices to prevent and treat non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
The project was launched on Monday as part of the Fourth Annual Centre Day observance. The Port Mourant centre is one of the first in Region Six to undertake such an initiative. The project entails widening scope of health care provided, under the theme ‘Eating healthy is living healthy,’ to teach the public how to make healthy food choices as exercise alone will not have a significant impact on health.
It aims to encourage citizens to cultivate their own kitchen gardens and, more importantly, to teach them how to correctly prepare food for consumption taking into consideration the health challenges of each family member.
“The idea is… if you look, you will see all the plants [being cultivated in the kitchen garden] are labelled with common names you are familiar with,” CEO of the Berbice Regional Health Authority (BRHA) Dr Vishwa Mahadeo said.
He explained that “every single plant we have there will have a folder attached to it, identifying its scientific name, and common names, to educate you.
It will have nutrition facts, and how to prepare it, for example, how a diabetic should prepare it or a hypertensive individual should prepare his or her meal.”
The health centre is equipped with a kitchenette which will be used to show residents how to prepare meals using the vegetables grown in its kitchen garden and this will “make it realistic for you, so you will be able to apply it to your individual lives,” Dr Mahadeo said.
He also revealed that the health authority is already in talks with the Minister of Agriculture to help those health centres that don’t have available land to find alternative means of cultivating a kitchen garden using materials from the environment.
Outgoing PAHO representative Dr Beverly Barnett was given the privilege of reaping the first batch of tomatoes cultivated by the health centre to formally launch the project. It is envisaged that by the end of 2013, each health centre in Berbice would have launched its own Home Nutrition Project and created recipes for preparing the food which would be compiled in a recipe book for the BRHA.
The Port Mourant Health Centre is taking health care delivery to a whole new level with the launch of a Home Nutrition Project for the community aimed at teaching residents to make healthy food choices to prevent and treat non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
The project was launched on Monday as part of the Fourth Annual Centre Day observance. The Port Mourant centre is one of the first in Region Six to undertake such an initiative. The project entails widening scope of health care provided, under the theme ‘Eating healthy is living healthy,’ to teach the public how to make healthy food choices as exercise alone will not have a significant impact on health.
It aims to encourage citizens to cultivate their own kitchen gardens and, more importantly, to teach them how to correctly prepare food for consumption taking into consideration the health challenges of each family member.
“The idea is… if you look, you will see all the plants [being cultivated in the kitchen garden] are labelled with common names you are familiar with,” CEO of the Berbice Regional Health Authority (BRHA) Dr Vishwa Mahadeo said.
He explained that “every single plant we have there will have a folder attached to it, identifying its scientific name, and common names, to educate you.
It will have nutrition facts, and how to prepare it, for example, how a diabetic should prepare it or a hypertensive individual should prepare his or her meal.”
The health centre is equipped with a kitchenette which will be used to show residents how to prepare meals using the vegetables grown in its kitchen garden and this will “make it realistic for you, so you will be able to apply it to your individual lives,” Dr Mahadeo said.
He also revealed that the health authority is already in talks with the Minister of Agriculture to help those health centres that don’t have available land to find alternative means of cultivating a kitchen garden using materials from the environment.
Outgoing PAHO representative Dr Beverly Barnett was given the privilege of reaping the first batch of tomatoes cultivated by the health centre to formally launch the project. It is envisaged that by the end of 2013, each health centre in Berbice would have launched its own Home Nutrition Project and created recipes for preparing the food which would be compiled in a recipe book for the BRHA.
