Lockdown Day 12 – World Health Day
Today, 7 April 2020, is World Health Day. This day is particularly auspicious today in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Let us all spend some time today considering how important health is to us all, and what we can do to ensure that we stay healthy. Here are a couple of ideas to start you off:
* General hygiene – go over the basics again and spend some time today showing your children how to carefully wash their hands, brush their teeth, and keep themselves clean.
* Healthy eating and drinking – let’s consider the food that eat. Where does it come from? How does it get to your house? Why do we eat it? Is it healthy? What does it do for us?
* Healthy living – besides eating and drinking healthily, also talk about how we can keep our bodies healthy by exercising. What exercise can you do every day? What does this do for you?
* Healthy thinking – this is an important one! Have we thought about our gratitudes during this lockdown time? How many things can we think of that we are grateful for in terms of being healthy, safe and fed?
This year, World Health Day celebrates the work of nurses and midwives. Nurses and other health workers are currently at the forefront of COVID-19 response – providing high quality, respectful treatment and care, leading community dialogue to address fears and questions and, in many instances in South Africa, collecting data for clinical studies.
Quite simply, without nurses, there would be no response.
Let us consider how, on World Health Day, we can engage our children in an appreciation of the work that these brave people do.
Many neighbourhood Community Groups and Collective Action Networks around South Africa (and around the world) have been formed in the recent weeks to provide support for our doctors and nurses working long shifts in the hospitals and clinics. Ask your local group whether you can perhaps bake some biscuits or a cake with your children that can be delivered to the hospital by the local initiative.
Ask your children to draw a picture for nurses and write a message of support. Photograph the picture and share it to your local hospital or local initiative’s social media page. Stick the picture on your gate so that nurses who are on their way home receive some messages of support.
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Siyabonga, Dankie, Re a leboga, Ke a leboha haholo, Ndza nkhensa, Ke itumetse, Ro livhuwa, Enkosi … in all languages – we thank you ♥️