Community Services as Part of Health Day Celebration: Need for Targeted Health Care Services

Background: Every year, nurse lecturers from the School of Nursing and Public Health choose the day's events and graciously provide their time to participate. The procedures included checking blood pressure, weighing, and providing general health instruction on various subjects. In that instance, the events were limited to university employees, a small number of students enrolled remotely, and anyone who might happen to be on campus that day.

Aim: is the present study aimed to take the service to the community around Oshakati to sell their service and to raise awareness about the reality of diseases such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and obesity under the theme: “High blood pressure”.

Method: The activities were carried out in April 2013. The activities were carried out on street vendors at Oshakati open market, members of the media who captured the event as well as the community member surrounding the Oshakati open market and community members from rural area who visited the open market on that specific day.

Results: The analysis of the findings was based on the users of the services. Many people who used the services were found to have high blood pressure up to 229/124mmHg, many of the women who sell “okapana” are overweight and seem to have lack the knowledge about balanced diet because they could not understand why they are overweight compared to their Body Mass Index (BMI). They prefer to keep their “fatness” because if they lose weight they will be laughed at and said to have AIDS. Many people were found to have high blood glucose levels (33.3mmol/L).

Conclusion: The results indicate the need for health care providers to strengthen the community services and outreach to improve the knowledge and understanding of community members on the need for undergoing regular screening. The interaction with community members was both a professional and learning life experience. Community members showed eagerness to know much about nursing and medical related issues. Planning the health care services should be done in collaboration with community members.