Dubai residents who adopt a healthier lifestyle, such as eating salads, walking a couple of kilometres or choosing sugar-free snacks, will be rewarded with free gym meberships, movie tickets and shopping vouchers as part of the emirate’s latest healthy living drive.
The reward system will be launched in March next year by the DUbai Health Authority, in partnership with the private sector, and will be linked to the mandatory health insurance cover, a senior official told Gulf News.
Dr Haidar Al Yousuf, director, health funding at the DHA, said: “For the first time in the country, the DHA is all set to use a behaviour modification tool to encourage healthy eating patterns and motivate residents to exercise. These kinds of tools are prevalent in the West. We are in the process of working out this scheme with our partners and, among other things, the rewards will also include free access to specialised health professionals or services, healthy meal vouchers, free subscription to health magazines and so on.”
Dr Raza Seddiqi, CEO of Arabian Health Care Group, was quoted as saying: “This kind of positive reinforcement is going to play a very important role in the community as the entire focus in health care has shifted from illness to wellness. People have realised how inconvenient it is to fall sick and they are likely to become active participants in the ‘health for all’ drive.”
It is the latest in a series of initiatives launched by Dubai authorities to encourage people to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Earlier this month, Emirates NBD, Dubai’s biggest bank, announced the launch of a new savings account that links health to wealth.
The Emirates NBD Fitness Account is a mobile-based savings account that allows customers to earn higher interest on their balances linked to their level of physical activity.
Customers will earn interest of up to 2 percent per annum (pa) on their savings based on the number of steps that they walk or run daily.
Starting with a base rate of 0.25 percent, interest rates start stepping up with the number of steps that customers take daily, climbing to 0.50 percent pa as soon as they clock 5,000 steps, 1 percent pa when they walk 8,000 steps and to 2 percent pa when they cross 12,000 steps.
The bank said steps will be measured by an Apple Watch or other compatible fitness devices through the day. The steps count will be tracked by the bank’s Fitness App which will translate them to interest on the account balances at the end of each day.
To get moving, customers need to download the Emirates NBD Mobile Banking App and open the Fitness Account.
Last year, Dubai authorities also handed out almost 40kg of gold as part of its weight-loss contest.
The ‘Your weight in gold’ initiative, which rewarded participants with gold coins for weight that they had lost, saw 7,350 people take part, according to Khaleej Times.
Dubai Municipality, which coordinated the scheme from July 15 to September 15, 2014, said gold coins worth an estimated AED6 million ($1.6 million) were given out to winners of the contest.
Participants were required to lose a minimum of two kilos in order to qualify for the contest, which attracted double the number of entries compared to the inaugural event in 2013.
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