18 November 2009. Kyiv, Ukraine - UNIAN News Agency and Glavred-Media Holding launched a joint National Health Educational Project "Save the Nation's Health".
Yanina Sokolovskaya, Chief Editor of a daily newspaper Izvestiya in Ukraine, stated at a press conference at UNIAN that the goal of the project is to strengthen the nation's health by promoting healthy lifestyles, balanced and positive attitudes, benefits, nutrition, physical training and sports, prevention of cardiovascular and other diseases, deprivation of bad habits and dependencies.
The project will last until July 2010. It is implemented under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Family, Youth and Sports, Ministry of Education and Science, the Parliamentary Committee on Family, Youth, Sports and Tourism, National Olympic Committee of Ukraine. UN Agencies in Ukraine, including the World Health Organization, agreed to provide informational support to the project on national and global context and other countries experience in these areas.
According to Yanina Sokolovska, Media Holding Company is going to schedule events, round tables, and direct telephone lines with the newspapers readers. "All people are tired of pessimistic and gloomy thoughts prevailed in the society, by now we should live in a prosperous country, but it is impossible without a healthy nation," - she said.
To make discussion on healthy lifestyles informative and unbiased an expert council was created, which unites experts from various disciplines: Honoured Doctor of Ukraine Olga Bohomolets, President of the National Olympic Committee, Olympic champion Sergei Bubka, well known psychiatrist and human rights activist Semen Gluzman, Demography Institute Director and social researcher of NAS of Ukraine Ella Libanova, AMSU academician Yuriy Spizhenko.
As Ella Libanova said at the press conference, depopulation is Europe's problem today. She brought a fact that the life expectancy in Ukraine occupies penultimate place in Europe; in the early 60th, Ukraine ranked 7th in the world, ahead of not only most European countries, but Japan.
Ella Libanova stressed that there is a very high probability of men death from 40 to 60 years. "If we lose a third of men at working age, 22% we lose in this twenty years. These numbers are absolutely incompatible with the current level of civilization development"- she said.
According to Ella Libanova, WHO experts state that only 20% of population health is related to medicine, 50% - lifestyle - food, alcohol abuse, smoking, and lack of graduated physical exertion.
President of Olympic Swimming Foundation Supporting Youth Denis Silantyev, said that it is estimated fact that the state not investing in sports, loses about UAH 230 million a year. “Sport – it is not just health and strength, it is life, increased efficiency. Investing in sport, in an active and healthy lifestyle we save 5 times more,"- he said.
Founder of the Private Medical Institutions Network for Children and Adults “Dobrobut” Ruslan Demchak expressed willingness to provide consultation, participate in roundtables, direct telephone lines and provide recommendations for a healthy lifestyle in the framework of the project.
Academician Yuriy Spizhenko noted that life expectancy depends primarily on the environment, lifestyle and medicine. He also said that the program of early detection of cancer is implementing now in Ukraine.
18.11.09
