ILOILO CITY (PIA) — The Department of Health (DOH)-6 encouraged the public to promote healthy lifestyle among children to prevent health risks among them later in life.
John Richard Lapascua, DOH-6 Senior Health Program Officer, said that the health department is targeting school-age children for its healthy lifestyle program.
“Even though that they are not experiencing hypertension and diabetes yet they are exposed to risk factors,” he said.
He said the youth today are vulnerable to major lifestyle related risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, and harmful use of alcohol.
“Some of our young people are smoking; some of them have unhealthy diet. Some of our youth have less physical activities because they have sedentary lifestyle while some are engaged in drinking alcohol which is illegal for their age,” he said.
DOH-6 said that hypertensive cardiovascular diseases (HCVD) were the leading causes of death in Western Visayas for 2014.
Data for DOH-6 revealed that HCVD recorded 11,829 mortality cases with a regional total rate of 157.63.
Hypertension is also the third leading cause of morbidity in Region 6 for 2014 with 30,219 total cases and regional rate of 402.70. (JCM/LTP/PIA-Iloilo).
