Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Wednesday, 17 August

Last Wednesday (August 17) was jam-packed with activities. The day started off with a jeepney ride to the Cebu Institute of Medicine (CIM), one of our local partners. Their medical students will be collaborating with us on the creation and implementation of a health education curriculum focusing on hypertension prevention.

This particular visit, however, was for a lecture given by Dr. Berden, who talked about hypertension in detail, including definition, types, symptoms and prevention. The lecture was a nice crash course/refresher on the science behind hypertension as well as information that will be useful for our health education curriculum. Afterwards, the team also got to mingle with the CIM students, who were extremely friendly and receptive. I look forward to getting to know them in the coming weeks :)

Our time with the CIM students was cut short, as we had to grab a quick lunch before heading over to the University of the Philippines - Cebu High School (UP-Cebu HS) for a symposium on environment and health. The school had asked us to participate, so we prepared a presentation on high blood pressure. It was a very exciting experience, as there were at least two hundred UP-Cebu HS students in attendance, and they were all very enthusiastic about our presence. Although it was a challenge to convey our key messages over the cheering and talking amongst the students, the team stepped up and did an admirable job.

After the PLs debriefed the team on the symposium, we headed over to my favorite restaurant in Cebu: Chika-An! We had invited the Gawad Kalinga officials we are working with in Budlaan, but unfortunately they weren't able to make it. Sayang! (what a shame) But I know we will get to know them more as we collaborate with them to implement the health fair and other activities.

That's all for today, but I can already tell that this is going to be a very epic and fun project :) Ingat kayo (take care)!

-Andrew

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