Today, the Department of Health’s Edendale hospital, together with Africaid, has officially launched a Youth Health and Wellness Academy on the first day of the youth month, June.
South Africa will commemorate the Youth Day on 16 June 2010 marking the 34th Anniversary of the Soweto Uprising in 1976. The Youth Month will be commemorated with an aim of interacting and bringing government services closer to young people throughout the month and beyond. Under the theme; “working together for youth development through action”; the department and Africaid have set up a “WhizzKids United Health Academy” at Edendale hospital which will serve an exclusively adolescent patient population with vital clinical services such as HIV testing, counselling, treatment and management of sexually transmitted infections, administration and management of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, and psycho-social support groups for kids living with HIV and AIDS. Healthcare workers will be fully trained and receive additional training to meet the needs of adolescents.
Africaid has donated towards the building of a youth health and wellness academy which will feature a computer resource centre and offer other services such as football teams, homework clubs, career guidance, and educational videos. These services are integrated with the football fun of WhizzKids United. By making health services as youth-friendly as possible we will increase the number of kids willing to access their life-saving health services, as it is notoriously difficult to get youth to attend clinics.
This initiative uses what the department and the Whizz kids United envisions as the entertaining and interactive medium of sport in an effort to provide a platform for providing adolescent friendly health services. Grassroots football is the basis for communicating the principle of "move for health".
The Chief Executive Officer of Edendale Hospital, Miss Zanele Ndwandwe, asserts that "football can function as a 'driver' that unites people across cultural or religious differences. Football constitutes a universal language. The language is fun, enjoyment and health education that derive from the game."
For more information, please contact:
Ms Samke Mncube
Cell: 083 738 4024
Issued by: Department of Health, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
1 June 2010
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