Promoting good health and well-being of humans is key to their individual developments and the world at large. The significance of this is enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 3: which stresses on Zero Hunger and Good Health and Well-being for all at all ages respectively.
I Believe Global Women Empowerment Foundation on Wednesday, June 8 2022, held a webinar on the theme “Evaluating The Global Burden of Malnutrition In Our Society”. The webinar was used as a platform by the speaker to educate and stress the need to eat and live healthy lifestyles, ie; exercising, to improve good health and well-being towards positive, social, economic and environmental transformative change for the advancement of gender equality.
Chaired by Mr. Yaw Agyei-Henaku, the webinar was attended by board members of IBGWE Foundation and other participants from various sectors across the diaspora. The Lady President Richael then gave a brief overview about the foundation. The session was moderated by Lady Priscilla, Veep-IBGWE, She introduced the guest speaker Dr. Saeed Jibreel, a Family Physician Specialist and Public Health Expert at The Bank Hospital, Accra.
Dr Saeed started with a quick lecture on nutrition with the prevalence of obesity and nutrition-related non-communicable diseases, the complexity of the nutrition landscape and the double burden of malnutrition. He also took participants through the consequences of malnutrition on health and development and the needed interventions to prevent malnutrition with a focus on obesity.
The end of the presentation saw an an interactive session with questions from participants and satisfactory answers from Dr. Saeed. He encouraged everyone to not just fill their stomachs with food but to consume food with the right proportion of nutrients. For children, he urged parents especially mothers to cut down on the processed food their kids consume and focus more on traditional dishes and breastfeed more as some mothers solely depend on formula supplements for their babies due to some constraints.
The worlwide prevalence of obesity more than doubled from 1980 – 2014 with women at a higher risk and for this, Dr. Saeed said “we need to encourage physical exercise among our mothers and daughters”. He also called for the need to make Physical Education a major and compulsory stake in our schools.
Lady Rachel Lundgren President of I Believe Global Women Empowerment said she has learnt a lot at the “very interesting program” and hoped that on the heels of successful engagements IBGWE Foundation would hold such webinars towards realizing its goals.
Story By: Honorine Yorm Doamekpor