Health education and promotion campaigns: Mauritius moves to improve the peoples' health status - Health education and promotion campaigns have shown slow results and have not reached their targets in the past 15 years, Mauritian Health Minister Lormus Bundhoo, observed Thursday at a workshop in Domaine Les Pailles, near Port-Louis, the Mauritian capital.
Organizers said that the workshop is meant to work out a communications strategy that will improve the health status of the population.
Speaking to medical superintendents, public health superintendents, Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) Coordinators, Health Information Education and Communication officers and officers from the Nutrition Unit, the Minister underlined the importance to review, rethink and re-engineer the communications strategy for a better Mauritius.
'The communication strategy has become more important than the mere production of messages, posters, campaigns or events as health issues and behaviours are recognised as being more than complex,' he said.
According to him, the society is going through dramatic changes and the methodology of communications has evolved and therefore there is the need for the communications strategy to be more aggressive.
However, he pointed out that changing behaviour is neither an easy nor a quick task.
Bundhoo said the World Health Organisation will send an expert to develop a Health Literacy Framework for Mauritius with the ultimate goal of ensuring a healthier nation.
'This framework must aim at developing a wide range of skills and competencies so that people can seek out, comprehend, evaluate and use health information and concepts to make informed choices, reduce their health risks and increase the quality of their lives,' the Minister added.
Pana 07/02/2013