At the level of the Karstadt branch, various prevention topics will be presented between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. This includes, for example, materials and information on travel medicine issues, sexual health, and the services of addiction counseling. Citizens can also test their health knowledge at a quiz wheel. On site, contacts from the field of child health are available and provide information, among other things, about dental care as well as current topics such as lice and scabies. Especially this winter, the health department received many reports of scabies cases in community facilities. The insidious aspect of the skin disease, caused by mites, is the long incubation period. Additionally, the disease is not always easy to recognize and is often misinterpreted as a contact allergy.
The event takes place as part of the "Health Office Day" on March 19th. On this day, the importance of municipal health authorities for the population is to be highlighted. Regional Association Director Peter Gillo: "Although health offices have come more into the public eye in recent years, their crucial role for the health of the population is often insufficiently recognized. Even during the pandemic, they took on far more tasks than just combating the pandemic. The annual health report of the health office of the regional association also provides information on this."
In the reporting year 2021, 140 full-time employees worked for the health department of the regional association. Nearly 85 percent of them are female. Although the work was still strongly influenced by the corona measures, advisory and prevention services also play a major role in the broad range of activities. More than 1,000 consultations on the subject of addiction were conducted. Two-thirds of these were related to alcohol and cannabis. In the area of AIDS and sexual health, over 400 telephone consultations and almost 1,000 in-person consultations were carried out. Another focus is children's and youth health. In addition to corona, the health department received over 600 reports of illness and suspected cases from community institutions such as schools and daycare centers in 2021. Around 340 of these reports concerned head lice infestations. Furthermore, more than 60 cases of scabies, around 50 cases of whooping cough, and more than 40 cases of scarlet fever were reported.
The complete annual health report is available for download at www.regionalverband.de/gesundheit.
