DecideTM diabetes awareness programme reached out to over 5000 employees at the ‘Albatha Learning Festival'

DecideTM has reached out to several organisations in the UAE to spread the message of prevention and management of diabetes
 
Dubai, UAE, February 27th, 2014: DecideTM Programme, supported by its partners Lifescan, Merck Serono and MPC, embarked on a drive to conduct free blood sugar screening campaign at the 2014 edition of Albatha Learning Festival. Albatha Group, one of the largest conglomerates in UAE has over 5000 employees from 25 group companies. DecideTM aims to educate, raise awareness and help in the prevention and management of diabetes across UAE. DecideTM conducted this programme with Ministry of Health, Sharjah medical District’s - Health Education and Promotion Department during this learning festival. DecideTM has conducted several corporate programmes aimed at generating diabetes related awareness.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) call diabetes the 21st century’s leading healthcare challenge. Diabetes complications and mortality create social and economic challenges that affect individuals, families, businesses and society as a whole. If trends continue, the IDF projects that by 2030, the number of people with diabetes in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region will almost double, reaching 59.7 million.

Dr.Amina Ahmed Ali Hashim, Director of health education and promotion department - Sharjah Medical District - Ministry of Health, stated that, our presence with Decide community at Al Batha Learning festival 2014 is a great opportunity to educate and inform such a large audience on the importance of healthy living. We believe that, employees are the heart of any organisation. Employees will be less prone to diabetes and other health-related diseases when they are given the right information on the benefits of healthy living, which mainly includes proper nutrition and an active lifestyle. We therefore wanted to educate them on basic food habit guidelines and fitness awareness to make them diabetes free tomorrow.”

Ms. Wadad Aboul Khoudoud, DecideTM Diabetes Programme Director said that, “Diabetes type 2  is a behavioral condition and it’s cultivated by sedentary lifestyle that often affect employees in a fast pace life. And it won’t impact only their health but also their productivity. To tackle this challenge, DecideTM regularly addresses corporates in the UAE as we believe through them we are reaching a wider part of the population to educate on diabetes and its prevention. Diabetes can be prevented by self discipline, such as adopting a healthy lifestyle, especially watching how much you eat and exercise every day. We would like to thank Ministry Of Health – Sharjah medical district for supporting the program and   Albatha for understanding our objectives and providing us with an opportunity to educate their team of over 5000 employees”.

“We are delighted to state that this year’s ‘learning festival’ was a grand success and we aim to grow it further. However, without good health nothing can be achieved. It is important to raise good health awareness levels and elaborate the benefits if healthy living amongst our employees.  A healthy body has a healthy mind and we are thankful to DecideTM Programme and Ministry of Health, Sharjah Medical District for educating our employees and providing them with the guidelines to achieve good health,” said Sabiha Kazi, Group Learning & Development Manager of Albatha Group.
This event DecideTM joined hands with additional health providers promoting healthy wellbeing. ‘OMRON’ provided a fully Automatic Blood Pressure Monitor and Body Composition Monitor which were used to conduct the checks and Step Counters were recommended for all the participants.  ‘HealthMatters’ provided general exercise guidelines for staying healthy and reducing the risk of having diabetes, and the team of nutritionists from ‘Healthtrendz’ provided the participants with nutrition related information.

Decide™ not only seeks to educate people affected by diabetes, but is also involved in helping family members understand how they can better support those who live with the condition. This can be achieved by promoting healthy eating habits, encouraging physical exercise, outside clinic compliance to medical advice, overall management and monitoring of the various areas of the body that can be impacted by diabetes.