HEALTH AND WELLNESS: IMPACT ON THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES

In our studies and work with several organisations we have identified with the global efforts on the statement that chronic disease and lifestyle-related health issues are on the rise globally, raising potentially disruptive implications for workforce planning and development. In order to effectively plan for sustainable workforces, employers with global reach are now compelled to refine business strategies with employee well-being in mind.

As economy of different countries and organisations are affected by the new global economic hardship, more pressure has been placed on executives and organisations like never before to uphold their organisations through sustainable innovations and strategies. This expectation is worsening the level of health outcomes of organisations through stress, burnouts, sleep deprivation, increased blood pressure, poor heart health, very critical timelines, leading to overwhelming mental and bodily task and overall health risks. These collective health issues, if allowed to prolong will make us all end up with chronic diseases in the long term. Retirement years are becoming characterised with so much illnesses which are outcomes of our behaviour and lifestyles during our active work age.

Smart companies across the world are enacting innovative health and wellness programs to stimulate improved employee health in such critical time as this. Motivated by a desire to positively impact their employees’ health and well-being, as well as driven by defined business goals and redefine their work cultures. 

Achieving business success is not only predicated on entirely business strategies and processes, the health and wellness of the work population cannot also be overemphasised. The question is how integral is a healthy population to our overall business success?

What is healthy population: This is the healthy outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within a group. Though there are existing health plans (health Insurance) in most organisations, but the urgent need to move from focusing on curative healthcare approach within the workplace and moving to preventive health underpinned in health and wellness programs is of urgent importance. The need for organisations to focus on social ecological models within the workplace and consider environmental cues that influence our overall health and wellness has become expedient.

There are two major critical factors that have become key influencers of continuous presence on chronic disease in our workplaces. The two major factors are:

• Dietary pattern or style
• Physical inactivity

Dietary pattern: What we eat becomes who we end up becoming. Our dietary pattern and eating habit has grossly changed in the past two decades and the need to revert the trend has become a global anticipation. Most organisations have common food sources and the need to tie the food types into our wellness and health programs is also of overall importance.

Eating behaviour amongst us has also gone very bad. Binge eating and disordered eating have characterised eating pattern amongst us all and this is fuelling our body sizes and body weight accumulation. It will interest us to know that body weight and body fat composition are pointers to our collective health risks. Psychology of eating states that people eat for different reasons; these talk about hunger, appetite and satiety. We should eat not because we have appetite for food but because we are truly hungry. Eating because we have presence of food all around us is stimulated by appetite and this is one underlying cause of increased body weight.

There is the concept of energy balance which we must all apply in ensuring a healthy life style and body weight. Energy intake over energy expenditure is what energy balance represents. If you must eat much, be sure you have enough physical activities to expend the amount of food taken in. This will keep you healthy.  

Physical inactivity: Physical activity is not same as physical exercise, this is unintentional or unplanned physical activities we get involved in. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines physical activity as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscle and require energy expenditure. Physical inactivity has become a huge confounder of chronic diseases not only among a working population but a collective global concern. As technology improves, mechanization of the workplaces increases and this fuels sedentary lifestyle amongst workers. The guideline for healthy living says, sitting in a position for one hour and above at a single stretch is unsafe and unhealthy to us all. Studies have revealed that sitting time is associated with increased risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and other disease states.

Most smart organisations in their attempt to improve healthy life style have adopted the policy of having a central printer system which is kept far from everyone’s seat. This means everyone will have to deliberately move from his or her seat to pick documented sent for printing. This means unintentional muscles activity has become part of the workplace engineering processes. This should be encouraged and emulated in workplace health and wellbeing designs.

Lack of physical inactivity has made obesity and overweight become prevalent in workplaces, people are sliding our of healthy body weight range while some are even getting into morbid obesity stage.

What is healthy body weight?

This is calculated using weight in kg divided height in metre square. Below is Body Mass Index (BMI) categories based on increased risk.

< 18 = Underweight

18.5 – 24.9 = Normal Weight

20.5 – 29.9 = Overweight

30 – 34.9 = Class 1 obesity

35 – 39.3 = Class 2 obesity

>40 and above = Class 3 obesity (morbid obesity)

Prevalence of obesity and overweight in adult population globally

Adult men: 34% are overweight and obese

Adult women: 35% are overweight and obese

Adult men in obesity above 30 BMI: 10%

Adult women in obesity above 30 BMI: 14%

We will be leaving this discussion here but if you can follow us in the next edition, we will be looking at sleep, stress and health risks.

You can reach us using ehi@ohsm.com.ng

  

LASSA FEVER IN WEST AFRICA: THE PREVENTIVE HEALTH CONCERNS

When we again look at preventive health contextually, we will rather refer to it as an approach by an individual, a family or a population group in taking proactive actions towards disease prevention. I would want us to take note of the words “Proactive Actions” which clearly tells us, we do not act in the face of the disease or illness but an action taken in advance to forestall possible occurrence of such diseases.

Taking a quick study of the recent outbreak of the dreaded Lassa fever which is a part of the haemorrhagic virus, I realised it has it traces and foot prints on same parts as Ebola virus, running within the four volatile Ebola virus susceptible Nations (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea). I suddenly perceive there are a number of things we might not be getting right here and one of such things is obviously hygiene.

Hygiene is almost like the bedrock of preventive health, most of the common diseases arising in deaths are very preventable through effective and sustainable standard of hygiene. These four countries are characterised with a high level of compromised hygiene standards which suddenly gets better at the outbreak of a viral disease and drops as the disease and scare comes to an end. This totally makes us reactive and being reactive only deals with surface indicators which the root causes are never unveiled and neither are they attended to in right manner.

As a nation and as a population, we must first deal with our commonalities before taking advantage of our peculiarities and this is a workable approach to safe health. Travel Medicine has told us that one of the fastest ways to spread infection across international borders is through travelling. Infections travel with its host looking for other vulnerable people to infect.

I was in all honesty thinking that these countries that have been infected with Lassa fever over and over again should have made it an issue of National priority to create a lasting prevention to Lassa fever virus by collectively creating a joint framework agreement on this issue. According to the WHO, between 300,000 – 500,000 cases of Lassa fever happens in this sub region annually and about 5,000 deaths are recorded, this is 1% case fatality rate (CFR). This is not a good one, the need to stop the outbreak of the virus is important.

Studies have revealed that women who are in their third trimester of pregnancy are at a higher risk with only 1 in 10 fetal survival rate. When this happens, healthcare workers mainly bother to same only one person and that is the pregnant woman and this is most times through abortion. I think this can be prevented. We have it here with us now, but do not forget we also have women who are pregnant in our midst. Recommendations are focused on regular hand washing, keep all foods in rodent-proof containers, keep the home as clean as possible all the time (rats are attracted to dirty and unclean environment). Also keep your windows closed at night, this guides against possible inhalation of very light particles infected by faeces or urine of rodents. This is not the best of times to drink garri soaked in water, most Nigerians love this meal but we must understand our new abnormal situation which is avoidance of soaked garri in water as meal. The virus will not survive in temperature that is up to 55 degree centigrade, this means you can use your garri for Eba (Garri in Hot Water) and also ensure your food is adequately cooked.

 

As we all come together to battle this scare of Lassa fever, we must not forget the fact that all cases end up in hospitals and hospitals are not manned by ghost but healthcare workers who are also as human as we are. The case of the Late Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh and the national sacrifice she made during Ebola outbreak in Nigeria should still be fresh in our minds.

Healthcare workers will surely have secondary contact and this is part of the risks they have in their job, but the need to also know what precautions to take as healthcare workers will not only protect them but also reduce the spread of the virus as well as national incidence statistics. There are already establishment of transmission of the virus through body to body contact or nosocomial routes which can be avoided through barrier nursing methods, VHF isolation prevention and having an effective infection control process guidelines. These may include wearing of protective clothing (PPE) such as masks, gloves, gowns, goggles etc. Other control measures are complete sterilization of equipment, isolation of infected patients from contact with unprotected persons until the disease runs its course. We must not forget that Lassa fever has no vaccine yet through trials are on in this direction. 

Talking about the disease running its cause, it is important to know that the disease lasts for 4 weeks but it has 3 weeks incubation period. In Nigeria as at today, we have 212 suspected cases in 62 Local Government Areas, 63 deaths recorded in 6 months and 17 States out of the 36 States in Nigeria have already recorded the presence of Lassa fever.

What this tells us is that the need to increase awareness and advocacy on the prevalent of this disease is of crucial importance. We cannot sound and resound this enough; we need to take the message to children in schools, to churches and mosques, market places, offices, motor parks and every available public place. We need to create enough information oxygen within this space; the people need to be aware of the role expected of them to play in such a very sensitive time in the life of their nation.

We can only reduce the spread of this virus, reduce the casualty rate if we all can talk about this in all places. There is no need to wait for the next man to be infected; it is a preventive health approach and strategy if you tell the next man how to conduct himself from getting infected by this virus. Tell him all that there is about this disease, you will only be saving yet another life.

I do not like gossip but if we must gossip let it be about Lassa virus, it will be credited on to you as positive gossip in the right direction. Lives are at risk here.

Play your role! 

ehi@ohsm.com.ng