World Heart Federation
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Children compete to become champions in cardiovascular disease

The Ghana Society of Hypertension and Cardiology, in collaboration with the Ministries of Education and Health, introduced the CVD Quiz Programme to senior high-school students, two years ago. It aims to educate them, in a competitive but fun way, on the importance of adopting healthy lifestyles so that they can make informed decisions to minimise their risk of cardiovascular disease.

Providing CVD prevention knowledge at an early age

The CVD Quiz Programme was introduced as a preventive project for senior high school students. Prior to this, all such programmes targeted adults but the results had been disappointing. The CVD Quiz Programme is therefore aimed at providing knowledge, at an early age, before unhealthy habits are established. 

How was the CVD Quiz Programme implemented?

The programme began with the publication of a booklet entitled Short Notes on CVD for senior high schools, which contains eight chapters on topics such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, nutrition etc. Each chapter covers information on epidemiology, effects of disease progression, prevention and where appropriate, the effects of some local habits on CVD. The booklets are distributed to participating schools at the beginning of the school term in September, which also coincides with the World Heart Day activities, and the students are given four weeks to assimilate the contents.

The participating school then selects a group of student representatives to form a small Health Club to digest the contents of the booklet. Their science teachers and at times volunteer medical students from the Ghana Medical School act as resource to prepare the groups. For the competition, the schools are put into groups and they progress through preliminary rounds, to the semi-finals and then the top four schools go on to the finals. The Quiz questions are based purely on the booklet and each school is represented by three students. The competition is completed before the end of November so that it does not impact too heavily on the school curriculum. Janet Carboo, one of the students taking part in this programme stated “We the youth have not been aware of CVD risk factors in the real sense. We know of Malaria. This programme will enable us spread the message amongst ourselves and family” she continued “We should form School Health Clubs so more students would get to know about CVD”.

Going national with the quiz programme

Ghana is politically divided into 10 regions and the aim was to start this programme in one region and add on other regions one at a time until it became totally national. The first competition started with 24 schools and for the second another region was added which included an additional 24 Schools bringing the total to 48. The competitions have so far been very keenly contested for.

The first Competition was supported by the Ministry of Health and the second by Sanofi-Aventis. The major challenge has been to obtain sustained financial support, if this was guaranteed over a 3-5 year period it would allow for the long-term impact of the project to be measured.

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