Community Health
Campaigns
In advocating prevention over cure, the hospital teams conduct regular health awareness campaigns and provide support to the surrounding communities. These campaigns prove instrumental in aiding the communities to resist health threats, and to adopt behaviours that promote good health. Through educational talks, games and interactive sessions, the teams encourage more open dialogue surrounding topics ranging from responsible alcohol consumption to HIV prevention.
Vaccinations and Testing
These health campaigns often run alongside opportunities for testing and vaccination. Last year’s open discussions and community sports activities for World AIDS Day encouraged the voluntary HIV testing of over 2,000 people. Equally, a National Polio Vaccination Campaign was recently launched which saw the team vaccinating over 4,400 children under the age of five. Going forward this campaign will be carried out twice a year.
Community Accessibility
Above all, we strive to ensure that our communities are sufficiently equipped with the facilities to take responsibility for their own heath. This includes our distribution of 15,300 malaria nets, and our collaboration with Vestergaard to bring safer drinking water to our plantation communities with ten ‘LifeStraw Community’ water filters. Approved by the World Health Organization, the self-assembled system removes up to 99.9% of bacteria and viruses. Placed in schools, hospitals and key community spaces, this has seen a 44% reduction in diarrhea incidences.
Children
We also develop engaging and audience-appropriate ways to embed these messages into the school children’s learnings, with a recent campaign involving the distribution of over 10,400 books to school pupils. In addition to the colourful illustrations outlining the major activities at our plantations, steps on good hygiene practices were printed at the front and back of each book.