Nestle Nigeria Plc has trained no fewer than eighty-four primary school teachers drawn from twenty-eight public schools located in the twenty Local Government Areas on nutrition teaching techniques required to combat prevalence of dehydration among Nigerians, especially children of school age under Nestle Healthy Kids’ Programme.
The teachers’ training workshop tagged, “Nestle Healthy Hydration Teachers’ Workshop’’, according to Martin Woolnough, managing director of Nestle Nigeria plc, was to equip primary school teachers with required nutrition teaching techniques that would be deployed to educate pupils with knowledge and understanding of hydration and importance of water to life.
Speaking on the effects of dehydration on the Nigerian population, Oyewole Oyediran, a physician and lecturer from the Department of Health Promotion and Education, University College Hospital, (UCH), Ibadan, disclosed that human beings need adequate and regular consumption of water to remain living, adding that a loss of 20 percent of water in human body, particularly among children, can lead to untimely death.
Oyediran, who spoke during the week in Abeokuta shortly after he delivered lecture at the Nestle Healthy Hydration Teachers’ Workshop, said that the healthy hydration teachers’ workshop became important having considered the essential and indispensable roles teachers play in the life of a nation, especially to the students, saying through teachers “pupils can have knowledge and understanding of life, especially about hydration and dehydration.”
The physician highlighted the usefulness and function of water and hydration to human body as including transportation of oxygen and nutrients into body cells, protection of human vital organs and joints, removal of waste and toxic products from the body, aiding of digestion among others, just as he urged children and even adults to consume more water for a sustained life.
RAZAQ AYINLA, Abeokuta
