Healthy Living for sustainable development
Every conversation about life and achieving dreams must in one way or another have a scratch of healthy living. The understanding is simple: Good health is good life.
A body deprived of quality health will fail again at every demand. Therefore, when we say healthy living for sustainable development, we are looking at the basic safe health steps that we are taking today to either improve or endanger our body tomorrow. It starts with what we put into our mouth.
I have often said that what we eat can either be our medicine or poison. If you eat right, your whole system gets better for it. But then, if you eat whatever goes into the mouth, your body will take the damaging hit. Healthy living is an important, if not indispensable factor for sustainable development. They both posses the siemese twin reality. Very much inseparable.
As we are examining the food we eat, attention also needs to be drawn to our overall health habits and what we do consciously or unconsciously to either ward off or invite sicknesses. Hygiene is one them. We often neglect the place of hygiene in achieving sustainable healthy living. But hygiene is as important as health itself.
At Healthy Living with Nonye Soludo, we have identified hygiene as a key pillar of our programme. Why so? Healthy living is generally incomplete without hygiene. So you look at most prevalent diseases and how poor hygiene has played a role in their spread. First is personal hygiene; taking care of our body as we should.
It includes oral hygiene, hand washing, cleaning and bathing. Then there is environmental hygiene; which entails taking care of our environment in a manner that makes it livable and sustainable for today and for tomorrow’s generations. You talk about our waste disposal habits, development plans and green economy mindsets.
The seventeen (17) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets provide handy masterplan for what we must keep our eyes on in pursuit of a better world. Each one of the goals explains distinct views.
Yet all of the seventeen Goals share a nexus hinged firmly to the principles of healthy living. It opens up an understanding that achieving each target draws us closer to the full attainment of a society where healthy living consciousness is leading all ideologies, in words and and in actions.
Consequently, when we talk about the relationship between healthy living and sustainable development, we may as well be forced to study each Goal and see the difference they make in our daily lives, in pursuit of a world worth each breath. You see, it starts and ends with healthy living.
Another crucial point to note is that healthy living is an all-encompassing process. Sustaining its very standards is a responsibility of all, not a few. Of course, a few can make the difference, but the power to sustain it lies with all of us.
Everyone is a stakeholder in the crusade. It is exactly so in my NGO, where we try every minute to bridge social, economic, idealogical, cultural and religious gaps in order to give everyone that sense of participation and support.
We can never do it alone. It is a demanding process that requires the inputs of all enthusiasts. We have often looked at sustainable development as one that serves the interest and visions of today’s generation without distorting those of tomorrow’s generation. However, the bonds are seamlessly knit to address health concerns and approximated differences.
In Anambra State, we see the healthy living crusade as a lifelong movement, to not only correct wrong health habits, but to instill the consciousness of right health in the mindsets of all our people, beginning from schools. Our carefully-studied blueprint resonates with vision and permanence.
We believe that with each lesson grasped from our teachings, a good seed has been sowed to bear fruits that will feed today and tomorrow’s people. We are looking to commonnize right health ideas, and enthrone a culture of health consciousness in every household. That way, we have saved those after us the stress of seeking solutions to probable endemic.
In all, we can see that see that healthy living is an undetectable part of our future. Think about what will happen in the nearest future if all of us abandons the standards of healthy living. Disaster! Sustaining our future must start from today; from now. We often say that a healthy society is a productive society. Productivity is sustenance.
It is only a society that understands the necessity of a healthy lifestyle that can prosper far. It plays a key role in our daily lives. It is the foundation of that future we wish to sustain. There is a lot that we are doing differently at Healthy Living with Nonye Soludo. We are building from the floor, to ensure that our message remains effective, say efficacious, from birth to maturity.
The six pillars of Healthy Living with Nonye (Nutritiom, Physical and Mental Fitness, Hygiene/Environmental hygiene, Mental health, Reproductive Health, Emergency Basic Life Support), unveil the focus of our programme, and every key factor we need to identify in the problem-solving approach. So, healthy living takes the shape of sustainable development, in philosophy and in pursuit.
Every approach to each target is corrective; building from the benchmarks of action. Each of those pillars represents an action of intent, and how all the actions are collectively weaved to attend to everyday needs.
For us, sustaining these actions is a major prerequisite to attaining a perfect trajectory of the movement. So, you see, every action we take in preaching the gospel of good health is in one way or another affecting the course of a sustainable future. Our human capital base is our future.
An unhealthy human resource is staring right at a very gloomy future. We have set our targets high to interconnect with pertinent realities. Since we all agree that health is the greatest wealth, we are very keen on instituting simple habits that guarantee today’s future without jeopardizing that of tomorrow.
By Nonye Soludo (Founder, Healthy Living with Nonye Soludo Initiative)