In the effort to cultivate a “safe and healthy environment” for students, the DHA or “Dubai Health Authority” launched the “School Health Policy”, which features three areas of attention, namely “disease prevention and early detection, health information and research systems and encouraging students to lead a healthy lifestyle”.
It is a strategic move as the authority is likely to introduce twelve programmes keeping the above mentioned three components in focus. These programmes will be directed towards emirate’s private schools.
The aim of DHA is to include more “fruit and vegetable” in the diet children between the age of seven to fifteen years old, whereby encouraging healthy food consumption habits. Furthermore, as a parallel measures DHA also seeks to allocate more time for students’ physical activities in an attempt to reduce obesity, which is also aligned with the “Dubai Plan 2021 and UAE Vision 2021”.
In the words of the chief executive at DHA’s “Primary Healthcare Sector”, Dr Manal Al Taryam:
“A holistic school health environment is needed to protect children and bring out the best in them. We designed this policy after carefully considering all these factors.
“We have worked with various governmental authorities in the UAE to jointly design a truly comprehensive school health policy.”
