CUHK Golden Jubilee Wu Zhi Qiao Health Campaign:

As part of the CUHK Golden Jubilee Wu Zhi Qiao bridge-building activity, CCOUC organized a series of public health activities for the local community in Dangzheng village, Gansu, between 28 April and 8 May 2013. Health education on dental hygiene, hand-washing and waste-management was delivered for students attending grade 1 to 9 at a local school, and basic health check-ups were provided for over two hundred villagers in collaborations with the Wu Zhi Qiao student representatives from Peking University. (Watch a 5-min video)

The activities were supported by Prof. Joseph Sung, vice-chancellor of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Prof. Sian Griffith, director of the Centre of Global Health at SPHPC, as well as over 50 volunteers from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Stanford University, Oxford University and Xi’an Jiaotong University.

Aimed to raise the local community’s health awareness related to improper waste disposal, over one hundred villagers and students from nearby schools participated in the waste management campaign on May 5, collecting waste from various dumping sites in the village. Student volunteers then shared with villagers the knowledge on waste classification, and everyone sorted the trash for appropriate disposal and management.

The trip offered practical field experiences for public health students from the CUHK and Oxford University. “The Gansu trip was a holistic experience for me…because it translated theoretical concepts of public health, learnt in Oxford, to practice in a wide range of activities [in China]“, says Dr. Kenneth Masamaro, a MSc in Global Health candidate from Oxford University.