‘Biggest winner’ award for ‘biggest’ losers

MUSCAT, MARCH 30 - After a three-month-long journey, winners who lost the most weight were declared. The campaign saw participation of health workers from medical professionals to paramedics representing 30 government health centres, polyclinics and hospitals from around the interior region of the Sultanate. The objective of the Ministry of Health was to encourage a healthy diet and lifestyle. The ministry in a recent ceremony, attended by health workers in the Sultanate, awarded the winners of its ‘Biggest Winner’ competition, a three-month-long campaign.

Held under the Directorate of Health Education and Awareness at the Ministry of Health (MoH), under the patronage of Dr Ali bin Taleb Al Hinai, Under-Secretary of Planning Affairs, the completion had two overall categories for the competition where the first category was based on the individual percentages of weight loss of the health worker, and the other assessed the collective effort of the entire health centre or hospital in designing a campaign for healthy lifestyle over the 3 months at their work environment.

“We had reached out to most of the health centres and hospitals in the country, however only 30 health institutions responded with interest in the initiative,” said Dr Amira bint Abdul Mohsin al Raidan, Director for the Directorate of Health Education and Awareness at the MoH.

“The first category was divided into two subcategories — ‘Obese’ and ‘Overweight’. “ To fairly judge the participants, we had to divide them because the Obese would normally lose a lot more weight than the overweight ones, we further divided the two categories into male and female because the percentage of weight loss in females and males also differs,” said Dr Maie Naga, public health and nutrition specialist at the same department.

“There was an independent judgement team and the seven members were from Non-Communicable Diseases Department, Nutrition Department and Health Education and Awareness Programmes Department, that selected the best teams according to the initiative based on designed assessment criteria,” Dr Amira added.

Among the obese males, Ali Mohammed al Shihi from Dibba Hospital lost the maximum, 26.3 per cent of his weight, and Halima al Habsiya from Samayil Hospital lost 20.3 per cent, winning the female obese category. Whereas, Juma al Sheikaili from Al Raazi Health Centre lost 7.7 per cent emerged the winner among overweight males and Amna al Kamzari from the Kamzar Health Centre lost 17.9 per cent making it to the top of the female overweight category.

The weight percentage lost was calculated over the three months of the campaign.

In the second category for the best campaign design, Al Wafi Health Centre located in Al Kamil W’al Wafi won the top place.

“We came across very interesting campaigns from across the 30 health centres, Polyclinic’s and hospitals, one of them advised their kitchen to make healthy meals and stopped buying ketchup, take honey instead of white sugar, have herbal tea instead of traditional carak tea, another one made it mandatory for people to use their stairs, jog and not have chocolates.

One health centre implemented a 10-minute walk around their premises everyday for three months and quite a few of the health centres are still continuing with the plans they had implemented even now when the competition is over.

That is what we wanted to achieve, to make them want to be healthy in their everyday lives, and not just for the competition, also to be an example for healthy weight for their patients at work place and at their homes within their families as well,” said Dr Al Raidan.

The aim of the competition was to inculcate healthy habits among the health workers who will, in turn, pass it on to the residents of the area where they are based.

“If you are being advised by an obese doctor or nurse about diet, weight or nutrition, how much would you actually listen? We want to ensure that our health workers practise a healthy lifestyle by themselves first and then create awareness among the public of course, our ultimate aim is to get to the public at large, but it needs to start with those who are the care takers of health,” added Dr Maie.

This was the first initiative in a series of other such events which are planned for the future. “We want to make this an annual event and we want other governmental sectors, apart from health, also to emulate our model — Muscat Municipality, the Ministry of Sports Affairs... etc and private sectors too, and reward people for being fit and also those contributing towards a healthier public lifestyle for everyone, and will follow-up the participants to maintain the healthy weight which is actually the biggest challenge,” Dr Al Raidan added.

This activity was also important to do because the Ministry of Health wanted to help the health centres identify non-financial means of implementing a healthy lifestyle campaign in their communities.