Once again the Faculty of Pharmacy got involved in this international event. The committee organisers were Prof Sunitha Srinivas, Dr Sandile Khamanga and Mr Niall Borland. The following students assisted and manned the exhibition, Theodore Duxbury, Duduzile Ncube, Fadzai Mushoriwa, Miranda Katsinde and Nomsa Chemuru. A special thanks to the students who sacrificed their study time to make this happen!
The theme this year was on the environment and how this impacted on one’s health, “My environment, my health”.
The exhibit was set up to be interactive, with 10 computers providing a quiz as well as various games and posters. Informative leaflets were printed in English and isiXhosa and handed out to participants.
2 Pharmacy students and 3 post grad students were present to assist, answer questions and engage with participants on how to prevent ‘environmentally –mediated’ health conditions.
The core message that was emphasised and instilled in mostly young scholars who participated was threefold:
To be in a position to identify what are common environmentally-mediated diseases/health hazards in South Africa.
To initiate health promotion activities that propagates the need for cleaner environment and better health within the communities.
To proactively assist individuals and communities in making changes for a cleaner and healthier environment.
The exhibit was very well attended and many scholars returned to redo the quiz, to get a 100% and a gold star!
A special thanks to Dr Karen Bradshaw and Brent Shaw from the Computer Science department, for providing the quiz program and generating all the statistics.