HPB launches "Let's Drink Water" campaign

The Health Promotion Board is embarking on Singapore's first "Let's drink water campaign". 

The campaign hopes to encourage children to say no to sugary drinks, and yes to water. 

The latest Students' Heath Survey in 2009 revealed that 43 per cent of students, including those in secondary schools and junior colleges, consumed sugary drinks daily. 

This is a habit which is associated with poor dietary choices and obesity in children.

Another HPB survey, which was conducted among parents and caregivers between 2008 and 2009, showed that 28 per cent of respondents provided sugary drinks more than once a week to their children between four and nine years old.

So HPB is working with pre-schools, primary schools, secondary schools and Post-secondary Education Institutions (PSEIs) to reverse this trend.

Among its initiatives, it has helped pre-schools develop a lesson plan for teachers to encourage water drinking among children. 

And it's all about making drinking water fun, says Health Parliamentary Secretary Associate Professor Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim. 

"Children like fun things. You don't make it like you must drink this, you must not do this and that. It gets very difficult. From my experience, if you make it natural, you make it easy for them to do it. You make it part of their life, a phenomenon not strange to them, then it'd be very useful." 

Under the HPB's programme CHampioning Efforts Resulting in Improved School Health (CHERISH) framework}, primary and secondary schools, and junior colleges are also encouraged to make more water coolers available in their schools. 

HPB hopes to have 500 pre-schools certified as CHERISH Junior pre-schools.