St. Kitts joins Diabetes observance worldwide
(ZIZ News)– “Healthy living and diabetes” is the three-year theme to mark the annual observance of World Diabetes Day. This year, the Federation of St. Kitts-Nevis has organised a week of activities to raise awareness locally.
Public Relations Officer [PRO] for the St. Kitts Diabetes Association Dr. Reginald O’loughlin told ZIZ news that this year’s observance focuses on eating a healthy breakfast.
“The theme is really surrounding healthy eating and healthy breakfast has been underlined as the main focus for this year. We feel that if you start off on the correct foot, you’re there with a healthy breakfast, consisting not just of those scrambled eggs and butter bread that we’re accustomed to, but if we have something along the lines of high fibre and fruits that we would be at least heading in the correct direction towards explaining to individuals that a healthy meal, healthy eating would help to improve your status if you’re a diabetic, it would help to lower your risk if you’re at risk for developing it and at the same time, improve your quality of life overall,” he explained.
The local activities commenced on Sunday with a church service at the St. George’s Anglican Church and continued today [Monday] with an informative talk at the Washington Archibald High School. Other schools will be visited this week.
O’loughlin then revealed the remaining activities for the World Diabetes Day observance.
“On Friday, which is the World Diabetes Day, we would have a fair at Independence Square where we would be doing testing, blood sugar screening between 9am and 12:30pm and during that time, we’ll be handing out literature material speaking to the issue of Diabetes and the complications and all of the problems surrounding it and at the same time, individuals would be able to register and become members of the St. Kitts Diabetes Association. On Sunday at 6am at the cenotaph, we will be participating in a walk/run,” he explained.
Although not listed as part of the official activities this week, a major event is being planned. Dr. O’loughlin gave an overview of that event.
“It would be important for me to add that on the 23rd of November, 3pm in the afternoon at the Old Girls School on Victoria Road, we hope to have a forum at which we inviting all diabetics on St. Kitts, all family members, caretakers of diabetics. This is the second in a series of such meetings and it will actually have present there an individual by the name of Margaret Stephens. She’s a dietician, trained dietician and she will be speaking on the topic of healthy eating, the components of healthy eating and looking at the cost factors involved, trying to show that we can eat healthily and still relatively inexpensively,” he said.