Drive begins to help Hyderabad cops stay fit and healthy
Police department signed an MOU with NGO to promote fitness in cops
Hyderabad: The city police department on Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Helping Hands Foundation, an NGO, to promote health and fitness among its 17,500 police staff.
Speaking at the event, city police Commissioner CV Anand said, "This MoU is being signed to promote health and fitness among police personnel and the NGO will design multiple programmes to work with police officers at every police station level. The city police force unlike other police units works under tremendous pressure and stress, which often take a toll on their health. Through this programme, we intend to assess and design solutions that can help them improve their health and fitness levels."
Mujtaba Askari, president, Helping Hand Foundation said, "The Health & Fitness Programme has been designed on the recommended protocols of World Health Organisation and aimed at weight loss, reduction in Body Mass Index and overall fitness. The programme will have three components such as screening, counselling and fitness. The staff will be screened at the police station level."
He added, "Initially, the focus will be on a few selective police stations/personnel. The screening will be done leveraging a WHO risk assessment tool, which gives a score on a scale of 13. Height, weight and waist size will be recorded to arrive at a BMI score. Those candidates that score over 5 or with BMI above 25 will be potential target candidates. A full-time doctor, male and female nurses, paramedics will assist the concerned police station in screening the staff using height and weight scale and apparatus to measure blood pressure and random blood sugar if required."
"The next level of intervention will be where the dieticians will start the counselling sessions on diet plans and lifestyle changes with the target group and will put them on a two-week diet programme. The target group will also be aligned to a fitness programme that will be conducted by trained fitness coaches both for women and men at the city police training centres. The fitness programme will have aerobics, floor and cardio exercises aimed at weight reduction and toning the body. Digital records of each person will be maintained and tracked periodically to check if he or she is showing any positive results in weight and BMI reductions," noted Askari.
She further added that the police personnel with existing non-communicable diseases like diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, thyroid problems would also be enrolled in the programme for prevention and control of disease.
The personnel who show improvement in their health and fitness well-being during the programme would be rewarded suitably.