Meeting the Challenges to Serve the Public


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By Ong It Seang

Around this time every year, the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences would organise the Annual Public Health Campaign to promote health awareness to the public. This year, we wanted to do something different.  Unlike the previous years, this time we included two small scale health promotions, at Pandamaran and Taiping, aside from our usual campaign at Sunway Pyramid.

This year’s Public Health Campaign saw my appointment as chairperson for the campaign and I found myself leading a group of people for the event. I foresaw that it wasn’t going to be an easy task. Indeed, the whole preparatory process took approximately ten months. It was a challenge to rally everyone to work together, but as there had been collaborations with various departments and faculties in previous Public Health Campaigns, we had a template to work on, and it was in this spirit that we decided that we would organise this health campaign together once more.

The preparation for the event began last August when we discussed the proposal. It was a challenge to receive approvals, as there were numerous factors to be considered. After several discussions with our Dean, we chose ‘Healthy Living: Without Diabetes’ for our theme. Although I encountered several hurdles in the process of running the event, I found the experience I gained throughout the preparations well worth the effort. We had high expectations for the event as it had drawn a large audience last year and was a huge success.

Our first campaign was in Pandamaran, Klang where we conducted screening tests on 222 people.   The screening tests included blood pressure test, body fat test, blood glucose and also cholesterol tests on the visitors who were 45 years old and above. All our screeners were fully-trained before they were allowed to provide these services to the public to ensure that we provided only quality service.

In February, we travelled from Pandamaran to Taiping, Perak, to our second destination. There we again provided similar services. However, the crowd was slightly different as they were from a different community. We managed to serve 188 people during our two-day trip there and it was considered a good turnout, as the population there was rather small.

On 3rd July, our campaign to promote health awareness to the public entered its final leg: at Sunway Pyramid. It was a 3-day event that lasted till Sunday. Our main concentration was placed on this final destination as it had been our tradition since 2002 that the annual health campaign would be held at a major shopping complex.

The pre-event set-up began with all members working hard to setup the site the night before the launch of the 3-day event. It was quite difficult to lay the set-up with the limited number of committee available. We took about 6 hours to complete the entire set-up which, were finally completed at 4 a.m. on the morning of the launch. At 8 a.m., we headed back to the event site. By this time, lack of sleep throughout the event had somewhat deflated our earlier buoyant spirits. Nevertheless, we were committed towards making the campaign a success and this gave us the additional burst of enthusiasm and energy to continue to give our best to make the campaign the huge success that it would become!

Last but not least, I would like to convey my appreciation to all my team-mates who had given their time and effort during this event as part of their contribution to the community. I would also like to thank all the support given by the university, especially people from various faculties to the University’s administration staff who had volunteered their help in one way or another, to make a success of this campaign. Thank you all.
     
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