The Wellness Day event saw several organisations, including Pink Drive, Cansa, the City of Cape Town’s Environmental Health Department, the local YMCA and Islamic Medical Association, among others, offering free services to residents.
Management of the Hanover Park Community Health Centre (CHC), in partnership with community organisations, hosted a Wellness Day at FG Lowe Village in Hanover Park on Friday 17 November.
The event saw several organisations, including Pink Drive, Cansa, the City of Cape Town’s Environmental Health Department, the local YMCA and Islamic Medical Association, among others, offering free services to residents.
On offer were dental, optometry and health-check screening along with information on common ailments and services available at local facilities.
Dr Neal David, family physician at the CHC, said the name change from the Department of Health to Health and Wellness made room for an event of this nature. “The addition of the word wellness to our identity indicates a shift in our traditional way of managing health care,” he said, “which tends to be curative, offering services at our facilities for people who are already ill. Now we are trying to promote a healthy lifestyle and wellness.”
The event ran from 08:00 to 13:00, with the hall filled to capacity.
“We can see by the turnout that there is a huge gap in our community in an offering that helps people live their best lives, rather than just being recipients of curative health care when illness has already taken root,” David said. “We live in an unhealthy society and environment as South Africans generally.”
“We want to shift back toward health promotion and disease prevention,” said David.
He said lifestyle illnesses that are as the result of inherited factors are common in the area.
FG Lowe Village director Reuben Kadalie said the attendance was overwhelming.
“We need a lot more awareness around health and wellness in our community,” he said. “We are privileged and deeply honoured as a facility within this area and having contributed to this event by hosting this major event.”
Kadalie sees this is an opportunity for the organisations to present events like this more often, bridging inter-generational gaps and encouraging health beyond waiting in queues at the CHC.
Pamela Lawrence, a resident of FG Lowe, said she was grateful for the event and found it to be a bit of pampering for the community.
“We are being spoilt today, because everything came to us.
“I am happy to see the turnout and they are welcome here with us.”
David said the department focused on three phases of prevention, which includes complete prevention, including of serious health complications and management of complications to live the best possible lives with conditions.
