The Tribune

By ALESHA CADET

Tribune Features Reporter

acadet@tribunemedia.net

ENCOURAGING students as well as faculty to live healthy lifestyles, members of the College of the Bahamas’ Campus Life and the Health and Safety Committee presented an on-campus ‘Go Red Health and Safety Fair’ last Thursday.

Wendyi Poitier-Albury, Director of Health and Safety at COB, said as a part of the mandate of her office, they wanted to ensure that the college community, which includes faculty, staff and students, remain healthy and safe.

“Today we are working along with our insurance carriers from Family Guardian and Bahama Health and along with Campus Life to try and bring this message to our college community. We are here providing services such as the blood pressure checks, sugar checks, weight checks, and we are also giving information provided by some of our student organisations on healthy life tips. We have one group, the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, they are here on campus and they are going to be giving information on how texting and driving. They are going to paint their thumbs, so when they look down at their thumbs and see it painted pink or green, then you will know, ‘Hey,, no texting and diving’,” she said.

Mrs Poitier Albury said healthy foods provided by some of the various organisations on campus were also available at the health fair.

“We are partnered with various clubs and organisations on campus that are assisting today and we are happy to have all of them here,” she said.

“Our service providers informed us that our employees are only using about 30 per cent of the services that are provided, so this health fair is another way of letting our employees know that these services are available to them. They have already paid for them, they have the coverage, so we have to make sure they use them. That is prevention and prevention is always better,” said Mrs Poitier-Albury.

Peter Mitchell, Assistant Director of Campus Life, said he was happy to collaborate with Mrs Poitier-Albury and the Health and Safety committee in putting on the event, calling it “Hopping into Health and Safety.”

“It is a Easter theme and we are talking about preventive health as well as screening for students, staff and faculty. We also have Doctors Hospital here with the blood van, because it is going to be a blood drive as well. We do this several times a year and from the Campus Life’s perspective, sometimes a club or an organisation like Rotaract, Pre-Medical and Science Club here would do it and put one on. Campus Life would usually put one on annually, and this year we decided to collaborate with the Health and Safety Department as a joint venture,” said Mr Mitchell.

He said the health fair was extremely important for students, but also for the faculty.

“The insurance carriers here today are also talking about their investment products that faculty and staff would need to know about in terms of them being successful in their life’s journey. As for students, it is important for them to practice healthy lifestyles now where we would want them to know of the things that they would need to realise, and what they need to know about food intake,” he said.

Mr Mitchell said young people tend to they feel invincible and think they do not need to go and get checked, but thanks to Bahama Health and Family Guardian, the college is able to offer cholesterol testing, diabetes testing and also blood pressure checks.

“To live a healthy lifestyle, people should eat properly and know what to eat. It is good to eat what I like to call GOMBS (greens, onions, mushrooms, beans and seeds); so if you stick to GOMBS you should be OK. However, the Bahamian diet is one that is usually full of a whole lot of fats and carbohydrates and so forth. It is not really a balanced meal that we in the Bahamas eat.

We find that our female students here at COB for the most part, in greater numbers are willing to give blood, but they can’t give blood because of their iron deficiency and this is a result of what they eat and their eating habits. So if they were to eat more proteins and greens, it would help them a lot in terms of being able to give back to others,” said Mr Mitchell.