NIA CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (April 25, 2019) — The Health Promotion Unit in the Ministry of Health, in the Nevis Island Administration, is offering primary school students on Nevis an opportunity to compose the winning jingle, which will become a part of the “My Healthy Kidneys” programme.

During an interview with the Department of Information on April 24, 2019, Renell Daniel, Senior Health Educator in the Health Promotion Unit, urged teachers and parents to encourage their children to enter the competition.

“It’s not just a jingle competition. It will teach children how to maintain good kidney health at grades four to six. These are things that some of us don’t learn until after we get the disease so we want to encourage the parents and teachers to encourage children to submit an individual entry from any student in grades four, five and six at all primary schools, “she said.

The Health Promotion Unit is partnering with the Ministry of Education and Taiwan ICDF to host the competition.

FengTa Tsai, of the Taiwan ICDF, is the project manager of the Chronic Kidney Disease Prevention and Control Project in St. Kitts and Nevis. He stated that the jingle competition is also being used to measure how students are retaining information that is being provided during health education classes.

“Every year the 14^th of March is World Kidney Day so we try to organise some activities during that week. For this year we started health education at all the primary schools and after health education we wanted to use another way to find out how much information do they gain from health education. We launched this jingle competition so they can use up the information…use the lyrics to explain how to prevent chronic kidney disease,” he said.

The jingle must be no longer than one minute and presented in audio or video format. The lyrics should be related to the prevention and control of chronic kidney disease and the typed lyrics should also be submitted, along with a registration form. Registration forms for the My Healthy Kidneys Jingle Competition are available at the Health Promotion Unit on Jew’s street, Charlestown, or any of the island’s primary schools. They can also be downloaded from the Health Promotion Unit Nevis Facebook page.

Submissions will be accepted until 5:00 p.m. on May 9^th, 2019.

For further details on submitting entries for the My Healthy Kidneys Jingle Competition, visit the Health Promotion Unit Nevis Facebook page; or call 469-8010, or 469-5521, extension 6393 or 2064, or send an email to renell.daniel@niagov.com