As part of activities to mark the 2023 Customs Officers Wives’ Association (COWA) Mental Health Awareness Week, the COWA Seme Command organized a road walk, health lecture and medical check ups for members on Saturday.
The exercise, which was led by the Chairperson, COWA Seme Command, Dr. (Mrs.) Balogun Bolanle, is compliance to a new initiative introduced by the COWA National President, Mrs. Kikelomo Adeniyi.
After walking from the Seme Customs administrative building to the beachside and medical clinic, the participating COWA members were enlightened on common illnesses and basic exercises to stay fit, while blood pressure and blood sugar checks were also administered.
Speaking with journalists, the Chairperson, COWA Seme Border, Dr. Balogun Bolande, stressed that the Mental Health Awareness Week isn’t just for mental health, as it is also about physical health.
Bolanle described the theme of the exercise, ‘Healthy Wife Wealthy Life’ as aptly underlining the role of women in creating healthy and wealthy homes by first being healthy.
Her words: “COWA is an organization that is more concerned about impacting the society no matter how little. Today’s outing with a fitness walk highlights for COWA members the need to be physically fit, while they also benefited from the health lecture by the doctor.”
“As a woman, you need to be stable and healthy to be able to care for the children, the husband and keep the home in a good state.”
“The nature of Customs work sees the men move around, sometimes from one part of the country to another with frequent postings. The question is – where is the woman when the man is moving around? Most times, the woman is in one location keeping the home and caring for the children.”
Noting that women must be able to multi-task in order to achieve balance at homes and workplace, she posited that being physically fit and mentally stable is essential for COWA members.
“As officers’ wives, we have the common challenge of our husbands moving about and that is why we have this association to address the common challenges. While we are excited to have COWA members partake in the blood pressure tests and blood sugar level tests today, we encourage them to make such tests a regular exercise,” Bolanle remarked.
Also speaking, the Officer-in-Charge of Medical, Seme Customs Command, DSC (Dr.) Nantwat Vongdok, recommended that governments at all levels initiate periodic mental health awareness campaigns in a bid to achieve stable mental health for Nigerian citizens.
“It is very good that the National President of COWA came up with this initiative. You could see that the women are excited about it and during the health talk most of them went further to ask questions beyond the scope of mental health.”
“Some of them have underlying medical conditions previously and we tried to advise them appropriately. For those who have established elevated blood sugar and are diabetic, we expect them to undergo blood sugar level tests as prescribed by their physicians, but ordinarily such checks should be done biannually,” the medical expert said.
The programme also featured a walk to the beachside for photos, exercises and networking for the over 40 COWA participants.
