Abu Dhabi: Over 300 employees received flu vaccines to help avoid bacterial and viral infections from spreading during changing weather conditions, and as part of a campaign to help reduce heart attacks among high-risk individuals.
The "Healthy Heart…Healthy You" campaign was hosted for the fifth time yesterday at Adma-Opco in cooperation with the Family Development Foundation (FDF and the Shaikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC), to help educate patients on cardiovascular diseases and prevention.
It also aims at offering hundreds of attendees free medical check-ups and a flu vaccine as part of a new health care initiative for 2011. Individuals were given the opportunity to check their blood pressure, blood sugar and heart condition with an electrocardiogram.
Other booths offered awareness lessons on rashes and allergies.
They also received a pulmonary function test, occupational health awareness regarding harmful substances and practices, and vision check-ups.
In addition the FDF, which has serviced over 1,000 females in the past three months, was offering family related programmes during the event.
Apart from his presentation during yesterday's event, Dr. Sherif Bakir, Consultant Cardiologist at SKMC, presented various lectures on cardiovascular diseases and prevention as part of the initiative across 12 public companies in Abu Dhabi since October.
"Our aim is to educate and screen as [many] employees as possible. In the past two years, we have screened 56,000 employees, and aim to screen a further 12,000 residents aged 25 to 75."
If individuals manage to prevent risk factors that translate into deaths and diseases, 90 per cent of heart attacks can be prevented.
