Today, April 7th, is world health day.
Well, with COVID-19 in full swing, this seems like a crazy time to be celebrating world health. That being said, I think it’s a great time to celebrate and honour our health workers who fight for us every day on the frontline.
The World Health Organisation has dedicated this year in particular to nurses and midwives and the vital role they play around the world. I will quote the WHO’s website here as it words it far better than I could.
Nurses and other health workers are at the forefront of COVID-19 response - providing high quality, respectful treatment and care, leading community dialogue to address fears and questions and, in some instances, collecting data for clinical studies. Quite simply, without nurses, there would be no response.
The best ways for us to support our nurses and midwives are, in my opinion, to show them our appreciation for their work by taking part in actions such as #clapforcarers and by following their guidelines and staying indoors as much as possible!
I think it’d be good to also talk about how to keep ourselves healthy while in quarantine.
First off, it’s really important to keep ourselves physically healthy. Not only is it generally good for your body, but it’s also good for your brain (see: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/how-to-using-exercise).
Whether you want to take advantage of your daily outdoors exercise by walking, running, cycling, etc or do some indoors work such as yoga and/or callisthenics, it’s really important to keep this at least semi-regular. I’ve linked some useful tools for this below:
Strava.com - useful website/app for tracking runs/cycles/etc.
Downdogapp.com - useful website/app for yoga/workouts (check out their ‘7-minute workout’!)
It’s also really important to keep mentally healthy. For this, I’d recommend using Headspace to familiarise yourself with meditation. I’ve used this app regularly and it’s really helped me.
I hope you’re all doing well. Please do look after yourselves and each other.
As usual, you may contact me at any time at jh10683270@pca.ac.uk if you have any questions/concerns/etc.
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Jamie Halton
Vice-president of PCA:SU
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