Health Day 2009
The Event
The Hindu Mandir at Professional Court has held a South Asian Health Day for the first time with an excellent outcome with over 300 people in attendance on March 29. The motto of the day was "Prevention is much better than the cure!" Working towards this motto, Hindu Mandir has done enough justice to reach the goal of the event, which was to make people aware about their life styles and to promote healthy behaviours.
Research has shown that South Asian people are less aware about their health despite being at a higher risk for some of the health conditions such as heart attack, stroke and Diabetes as compared to the other populations around the world. The South Asian Community has shown its support to the health event by presenting their enthusiasm to change some of their habits and risky health behaviours in order to live a healthy life. The health event was found very useful and informative to the community as per the response of several attendees. "Where else would I get a chance to meet such specialists at one event without an appointment and who are aware of the health concerns in our community?" noted one of the attendees.
Organizations such as Heart and Stroke Foundation, Toronto Vegetarian Society, Canadian Diabetes Association - just to name a few participated in the event by sending their own representatives. The event basically was composed of four key note speakers including Dr. Rambihar (Cardiologist), Dr. Rina Kotecha (Dentist), Sunita Mohan (Nutritionist) and Kishan Kandakur (Heart and Stroke Foundation) with some key information for health teaching. There were excellent presentations by the speakers followed by an open question-answer session at the end that helped the community to be sincere about their health. Many felt that it was definitely an eye opener in terms of the information they received, especially in terms of the statistics Dr. Rambihar gave in the case of heart disease in the South Asian community. The doctor stated that "we have become a community with the least rate of Heart Disease to the community with the highest rate in the last 50 years!" Change what is what is required in our health habits is the message he sent and many received it load and clear.
There were also over a dozen booths from different health organizations mentioned above that were disseminating pamphlets, glucose measurements for diabetics, education booklets, yoga education, alternative therapies and much more in different languages and also souvenirs for health teaching.
The outcome of the event has been incredible that Hindu Mandir is proud to organize such an event annually with the help of its volunteers and in particular its volunteers from its Youth Committee. The driving force behind the event were Prachi Vasubandhu (Registered Nurse with the Trillium Hospital), Sahaj Patel and Amit Metha both Health Sciences students at UTM and active volunteers at the Mandir. Overall, Hindu Mandir has taken a significant step to promote a healthy life by bringing the community resources together at the Mandir and encouraging the community to live healthy. Details of the event will be updated shortly at www.Hindu-Mandir.net/HealthDay
Click here to see pictures of the Event
Yoga Classes at Hindu Mandir
Building upon the success fof South Asian Health Day, the Hindu Mandir is offering Free Women's Yoga Classes on Sundays from 7:30 am to 8:30 am.
A series of classes for Men is also in the works, if you are interested please also register here and you will be contacted once the details are finalized.
Thanks, Hindu Mandir.