Brighter Pur-pose Foundation, education and health advocacy group, in con-junction with the El-wak Keep Fit Club on Saturday organised an aerobic exercise, at the El-wak Sports Stadium in Accra, to sensitise the public on the dangers of diabetes, a major health problem that is associated with high blood sugar.
Dubbed ‘Diabetes Awareness Aerobics’ the participants under-went about two hours of aerobic exercise under the supervision of physical training instructors to keep fit and improve on cardiovas-cular health.
“We are using aerobics to drive away diabetes,” the chairman of the club, Emmanuel Tetteh told the Times Sports.
He added: “We are here to throw more light on the disease, it has been proven that exercise is one of the remedies that keep diabetes away.”
At the sideline was a diabetes screening by Health Belt Founda-tion, a non-governmental organi-sation that focuses on preventive health.
The Managing Director of Brighter Purpose Foundation, Maabena Webb, said November being diabetes awareness month, they decided to collaborate with the El-wak Keep Fit Club to raise public awareness on the dangers of diabetes, as part of their corpo-rate social responsibility.
“We want to drum home the dangers of the disease; yes diabe-tes exist but there are ways to curb it through lifestyle changes, good balanced- diet, regular exercising, that is what we are doing today,” she said.
“As a country, we need to come together as policymakers and regulators and try to encourage vegetable production and make them available on the market and affordable under healthy condi-tion,” Mrs. Webb said.
She advised the public to exer-cise to burn the carbohydrate and fat intake and encourage the use of non- sugar, no- calories sweet-eners such as Splenda stevia.
The Chief Patron of the El-wak Keep Fit Club, Dr Madeez Adamu Issah said diabetes awareness month was a significant occasion for the club to join forces to increase public awareness on the need to avoid sedentary lifestyle but remain active to improve gen-eral well-being.