Sun warning

The ACT's Chief Health Officer urges older Canberrans and ethnic minorities to protect against the sun.

Transcript

00:00I think everybody in Australia probably needs to focus on the fact that sun is important

00:06and can be dangerous as well, but certainly ethnic minorities who might come from cultures

00:10where the sun doesn't have so much in terms of their upbringing and knowledge.

00:15So we need to be sun smart and we certainly have some really good campaigns out there

00:19and some material around how to be sun smart and some of that will certainly be directed

00:24towards some of those ethnic minorities and cold communities.

00:26If I just remind everybody, sun smart is about being really careful with the sun.

00:31Wear your hat if you're out in the sun, make sure you're using SPF 30 plus sunscreen, keep

00:36covered up, watch that UV index and don't go out in the sun when it's at its maximum.

00:41Stay in the shade during the hottest part of the day.

00:44My experience is that our younger generations are actually learning to be sun smart from

00:50a really young age, that you often go to the beach and to the playground and young children

00:55are wearing hats and being completely covered.

00:58But it's the older generations, probably their parental groups, who may not be expressing

01:03that sun smart behaviour as we would like.

01:06So we'd really like that generation to consider that they can still get sun burnt, they can

01:11still get skin cancer and they can still get heat related illness from being sun burnt.