Dubai: The Ministry of Health and Prevention on Wednesday honoured winners of the ‘Art for Health 2018’ competition who used art to spread the message of adopting a healthy lifestyle.
The competition was open to the youth in the UAE and focused on three indicators within the national agenda — tackling obesity in children and adolescents in the age group of 5-17 years; reducing the mortality rates of cardiovascular diseases; and reducing the incidence of diabetes in the country.

Dr Hussain Abdul Rahman Al Rand, assistant undersecretary for Health Centres and Clinics, and Dr Fadila Sharif, director of Education and Health Promotion Department, presented the awards to the winners.
Dr Al Rand thanked the attendees and youth especially for contributing towards building an effective communication bridge with the wise leadership.
“The use of art as a new form of communication to convey the ministry’s messages is aimed at improving the health of present and future generations,” Dr Al Rand said.

He pointed out that the launch of the ‘Art for Health’ awards forms part of the ministry’s strategy to promote healthy lifestyles in the UAE community and to provide comprehensive and integrated health care in innovative and sustainable ways to ensure community’s protection against diseases.
The campaign also supports the ministry’s and its partners’ efforts in the UAE to develop the National Strategy for Combating Non-communicable Diseases (2017-2021), in line with the National Agenda 2021 to develop a health system and provide comprehensive health coverage based on the highest international standards.
Dr Sharif explained that the ‘Art for Health’ award has four categories — Film, Animation, Photography and Painting. The best three posts were selected in each category.
Dr Sharif said the goal of the ‘Art for Health’ competition is to encourage young people in the UAE to create art works that highlight the most important health challenges in the society from an innovative perspective to make a positive difference.
The top three winners of the Film and Animation categories each won Dh100,000, Dh80,000 and Dh50,000, respectively.
The top three winners of Painting and Photography categories bagged Dh50,000, Dh30,000 and Dh20,000, respectively.
Razli Marwa, 21, who won first place in the photography category, said she tried to depict all the three themes of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases in her photograph.
She took a photo of a pair of lungs at home using broccoli. The left lung is perfectly healthy while the other is the lung of a smoker. She told Gulf News: “The lungs portrayed characterises “life” as we often associate ‘living’ with ‘breathing’. The greens are created with broccoli, and the decaying parts depicted with caffeine.”
Winners
Ahmad Hisham Khattab: Film
Abdullah Saeed: Animation
Razli Marwa: Photography
Nemar Precioso Sencil: Painting

SOURCE : GULFNEWS