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Last week Belize marked Older Persons week with a series of activities. Today, the Ministry of Health hosted a symposium to strengthen the concept of healthy aging for Belize’s nation builders…our seniors. Here’s the story.
Seniors from across Belize gathered to celebrate the first Healthy Aging and Nutrition symposium, which was led by the Ministry of Health and Wellness. And nowhere was that more evident than at the Biltmore Plaza, where the senior step dancers strutted their stuff.
Under the theme “Eat Well , Live Long, Age Strong”, the event was put together to foster learning, share knowledge, and open discussion around the challenges of longevity and elder care. Healthy Living from an Early Age was highlighted where they added that it is far more effective than waiting until later in life. Representatives from partnering entities also took to the podium to share their contributions and ongoing efforts to support older people within the community. Highlighting that healthy living from an early age is far more effective than waiting until later in life. As a part of the initiative, seniors receive educational resources, including recipe books featuring tailored diet plans to encourage healthier eating habits.
Love News spoke with Robin Daly, who is a nutritionist and a technical advisor at the Ministry of Health and Wellness.
Robin Daly, Nutritionist & Technical Advisor, MOH: “Once we look at the theme, we have to look at eat well, live strong. We have to be able to provide information to people. It is important that people understand what are some things I need to have in my day-to-day diet? What are some things I need to do? If you notice today, they also did physical activity. Some of those older persons are moving more than the younger persons, as you know, but it’s a lifestyle, right? As we look at the title and the objective for having this symposium, as you know, aging is a process. It’s inevitable. We all have to age. And we have also to work with different age groups and different sectors in the community. And many times, we’re looking at the adult population, sometimes children. We have to also cater our activities that will also cater to the elderly or the older person’s population so we’re looking at providing information, providing a medium where we can share what our entities are doing, so what the ministry is doing, what the Council of Aging is doing to support older persons or elderly within our society. And a big focus today is on nutrition because as you know, it’s very important as we look at managing disease and actually helping to prevent illness in older years when we see its most common.”
In his keynote address, the Minister of Health and Wellness, Kevin Bernard, emphasized that supporting the aging population requires more than just from the Ministry of Health. It also calls for multi-sectoral collaboration.
Hon. Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health & Wellness: “Well I think it’s important for us to be here and at the same time to highlight the importance of looking at our population and stressing the need for us to take care for our elder citizens but at the same time to promote healthy eating because we have to understand that we all will get to that stage and we age every single day. The ministry through its national nutrition policy has encouraged various steps starting from the healthy eating habits in the schools, we are talking about putting legislations to deal with sugary food and drinks, trans fats and all these things. But all these things have to start from a very early age. As you relate to now aging, we’ve seen a lot of our population in the upper 60s that are suffering from hypertension, NCDs, which is a burden in the health system. We need to ensure that we can educate them. We need to ensure that we are able to provide that support. Home Caregiving, we have seen a lot of that now taking place through HELPAGE, through the National Hospice Association as well. You heard the National Council of Aging do a lot of home caregiving. But we need to ensure that Belizeans understand, and the citizens understand that we must care for our families, we must care for the elderly, but also we must prepare for when you age.”:
Another partner in the initiative was the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise. We also spoke with the Minister, Jose Abelard Mai, who highlighted the significance of implementing school gardens, family Gardens with the objective to produce your own food.
Hon. Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture: “The Ministry of plays a very important role in health and aging. Food security is our objective. Safe and wholesome foods and of course affordable foods. If our elderly are not getting healthy foods and they’re getting wholesome foods and it’s not affordable to them and it’s not food security anymore. So that’s our objective to ensure that we have affordable food, wholesome, healthy foods, and that we take care of our elderly. So that raises the importance of our backyard gardens and our school gardens and teaching our children to use our own food. The more food we produce, the less we import and the more control we have over what is produced, the way it’s produced. So that is very important. My message to them is a very brief message.”
The symposium is the first of several initiatives aimed at promoting healthy aging for older people in Belize. It also reflects Belize’s commitment to enhancing the lives of the elderly, creating a platform for continued dialogue, innovation and togetherness effort in the supporting of aging.
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