Joe Pitcher
Videotel, part of KVH Industries, has produced a series of 10 programmes with accompanying workbooks that explore the many aspects of crew health onboard. The “Healthy Living at Sea” series highlights many important areas, including the benefit of eating a balanced diet, regular exercise, disease prevention, and proper working patterns to avoid fatigue and stress.
“In today’s tough climate, ship owners and ship managers cannot afford any downtime in a ship’s operations, so maintaining a full complement of healthy crew is vitally important,” says Joe Pitcher, Videotel sales director. Management and crew must have a good understanding of the risks, and plan ahead to ensure that all protective measures, both medical and practical, are in place.”
Understanding healthy living is particularly important for crew when entering a port in a region where infectious diseases are prevalent. It is also possible that crew members may join a ship while incubating an infection which can spread all too easily in the close and enclosed living conditions onboard; therefore, the first programme in the series reviews personal hygiene and infections, and the second investigates infectious diseases and vaccinations.
Other programmes in the series tackle substance abuse, safe sex, and the importance of the Statutory Medical Certificate. The last of these focuses on the responsibility of seafarers to provide honest and accurate information when undergoing a medical, including details of any prescribed medication taken to ensure enough supplies are available onboard.
Videotel is renowned for caring about the health of crew and has offered free advice to mariners recently regarding two high-profile outbreaks, the Ebola and Zika viruses.
Produced in association with Steamship Mutual, the “Healthy Living at Sea” series comes in Video On Demand (VOD), VOD online, DVD, and eLearning computer-based training (CBT) formats.
