This World cancer day, AstraZeneca and Plan India signed an MoU to expand its ‘Young Health Programme’ (YHP) in the state of Karnataka after its success over the past 10 years in Delhi and Tamil Nadu.
Present at this virtual event, Gagandeep Singh, Managing Director AstraZeneca India said, “YHP is one of our key global community investment initiatives specifically focused on empowering young people with the knowledge to make healthier choices so that they will become healthier as adults. With Plan India, we are working locally, nationally, and globally to deliver accurate health information and fight the myths and stigma around NCDs. Cancer is one of the most common NCDs so it gives me great pride to announce this expansion to Bangalore as one of our first target regions in the state on this World Cancer Day.”
YHP aims to reduce the uptake of unhealthy behaviours in young people to improve their health outcomes as adults and help address the growing burden of NCDs on health systems. YHP established 15 ‘Health Information Centres’ in Delhi, 2 in Chennai and will be launching 3 in the communities around Mahadevpura, Dasarahalli and Yelahanka in Bangalore. In this first year in Karnataka, YHP aims to reach 50,000 adolescents and build a strong foundation to scale up the project in the years to come.
Present at the event was Dr Ravi Kumar, Senior Regional Director, MOHFW who addressed the audience and spoke about the role of awareness and early intervention in defeating cancer said, “We are all dealing with a pandemic for the past two years which made it natural for us all to focus on curbing its spread as much as possible. But equal focus is needed towards generating right awareness and understanding about lifestyle related diseases and adolescents is the right group to target if we need to safeguard our future. I am glad that organisations are joining hands towards the same to propel knowledge on this subject across more and more parts of the country.”
Mohammed Asif, Executive Director, Plan India, said, “Many adolescents and young people in our country are looking for information and knowledge on health and wellness so that they can improve the quality of life. Since 2010, Plan India’s Young Health Programme, supported by AstraZeneca, has been providing adolescents and youth from the urban and rural poor families with quality information and knowledge on non-communicable diseases and better life skills and choices. On the occasion of World Cancer Day we once again focus on our resolve to support children, adolescents and young people and their parents and care givers on healthy behaviours and be protected from cancer.”