World Salt Awareness Week

World Salt Awareness Week is being celebrated this week around the world under the theme ‘Look out for hidden salt.”

World Salt Awareness Week was first introduced 10 years ago by an organization called “World Action on Salt and Health” (WASH). This important week serves to highlight the importance of reducing salt intake in all populations throughout the world.{{more}}

In SVG, the Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment will officially launch a Salt Reduction Project that is designed to encourage mothers of pre and primary school children to cook with less salt and buy low salt products, in a bid to prevent adverse health conditions such as hypertension and strokes.

SVG is one of four CARICOM countries that have been selected to conduct this social marketing project, designed to reduce salt intake among a segment of the population using social marketing approaches. The others countries are Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and Jamaica.

The project is a collaborative initiative involving the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Healthy Caribbean Coalition, and World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Social Marketing at the University of South Florida, USA.

The official launch will take the form of a sensitization session, along with an exhibition to highlight the importance of reducing the amount of salt that is consumed daily, to the internationally recommended intake of less than 5g or 2,000 mg from all sources of salt per day.

The launch will take place at the Kingstown Clinic on Wednesday, March 2, 2016, beginning at 9 a.m. The target audience will be mothers of primary school children attending the Child Health Clinic.