FAUJA SINGH inspires Peel region at STOP Diabetes foundation’s 3rd annual event

Over a thousand people participated in Stop Diabetes Foundation’s (SDF) 3^rd annual free healthy living education seminar on Saturday May 21^st. The event – held in Brampton at the Canadian Convention Centre – had British national Mr. FAUJA SINGH as the inspirational guest of honour.

This marks another successful annual event for SDF, which has gone from strength to strength and generated more and more public and media participation each year. Through such large-scale as well as smaller scale grassroots-level health education seminars, SDF is aiming to achieve its “VISION 2020” – i.e. to remove the infamous #1 tag of ‘Capital of Diabetes’ from Peel region before the year 2020. SDF aims to accomplish this through a series of community initiatives that communicate simplified health information to the public – emphasizing lifestyle, diet and fitness as the most powerful tools in this fight against the growing epidemic of diabetes in the region.

The educational and informative day on May 21 – which had a running duration of 6 hours from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm – was a crash-course on healthy lifestyle and was translated live in three separate languages. It featured a detailed morning information session on SDF’s community health initiatives; an engaging conversation with the epitome of healthy living – the 105-year-old S. Fauja Singh; dedicated diet education and exercise sessions; a healthy Ramadan fasting workshop; an enlightening question and answer period and door prize giveaways. An attentive and engaged audience thoroughly enjoyed S. Fauja Singh’s words of wisdom and took away important life lessons for living healthy. Nicknamed “The Turbaned Tornado” S. Fauja Singh – a Sikh centenarian marathon runner and a world record holder for completing marathon in his age bracket – attributed his physical fitness and longevity to a simple portion-controlled diet and his daily exercise regime. A healthy, vegetarian lunch wrap – with menu labeling for calories, carbohydrates, fats, proteins and salt content – was provided free to the attendees during the information-filled afternoon.

In an endeavour to facilitate the SDF VISION 2020, Dr. Harpreet Singh Bajaj – the founder of this charitable organization, announced a key new pharmacy initiative called “Find your score” – where inhabitants are encouraged to go to any Peel region pharmacies, answer a survey with 12 simple questions and get their risk score prediction of developing diabetes calculated by the pharmacists (without needing a blood test). Depending on the risk score calculation, the community pharmacist will then provide health education to try and reduce the person’s health risk over time.

Additionally, certified healthcare providers of STOP Diabetes Foundation provided free services of glucose testing, blood pressure testing in addition to pharmacy and dietician booths in the hallway of the Convention Centre throughout this health education filledSaturday.