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Candeal Program: Healthy Saturday

22/03/2014

Unity is strength. The phrase is a cliché, but it was precisely the union of students and teachers of the Candeal Program with the residents of the Rua Amazonas community that ensured the success of the Sábado Healthy, held on March 22nd. Rooms, garages, balconies were converted into spaces for stretching and offices where residents could receive assistance.

Monitored by professors Cláudia Santana (Nursing), Lea Ferreira (Biomedicine), Lavínia Boaventura Silva (Physiotherapy), Renata Roseghini (Biomedicine) and Maria Antonieta Araújo, coordinator of the Candeal Program, students from the various courses at Bahiana performed auricular acupuncture treatments; yoga and theater workshop; demonstration of first aid; measurement of glycemic index, blood pressure and Body Mass Index (BMI); uterine media of pregnant women; guidance on oral health; in addition to recreational activities including a workshop with teenagers, such as musical games, film projection and children's education.

According to Prof. Maria Antonieta, Healthy Saturday was “a lively class of social participation, of educating adults and children, welcoming families, guiding mothers, raising awareness among teenagers, among many other activities carried out, reaffirming this interdisciplinary program as the practice in collective health”.

For the resident D. Lourdes Soares Brandão, responsible for the Pastoral da Criança in the community, the initiative of Bahiana "Congratulations. A real success and with the participation of the community", he declares, telling that the families opened their homes spontaneously. "There is a resident who always opens his garage for activities with the children", he says.

“The Candeal Program is a way for us to practice everything we've learned and associate it with the reality of the Brazilian population, it's to do health with the little that is sometimes provided”, reports the dentistry student, Luiz Mateus Lago da Costa. He joined the program last year, but as he identified so much with the work, he decided to come back and voluntarily participate in the action. “What made me return was the contact with the underprivileged. Even such a simple gesture of ours can change the routine of many people in the community. I will always want to help in any way I can”, declares the student.

Another important seed planted during the event was the creation of a community library. During the solidarity hazing promoted by the DA of Biomedicine, more than two thousand books were collected, material that was donated to the community during the Healthy Saturday. The idea is that residents of Rua Amazonas receive training from the Libraries sector of the Bahiana to manage the unit that will be deployed. The actions provided assistance to around 180 people, each of whom had to participate in at least three activities to be entitled to a raffle of food baskets also collected during the solidarity hazing.