Tackling NCDs meaningfully

THE EDITOR: I was pleased to see the current crisis with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) addressed in the Newsday editorial of November 18, "Deadly NCDs," which called for more education and a holistic approach in tackling NCDs..

While acknowledging that there are many risk factors for NCDs, including unhealthy lifestyles, one has to be careful that the problem is not viewed only in terms of people making unhealthy choices. Tackling NCDs meaningfully would require the Ministry of Health to significantly increase and improve its strategies to raise public awareness about the current crisis, and take decisive action to address this public health emergency.

One approach may be for the ministry to partner with the Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government to take the TT Moves programme into all the municipalities in an intensive health-promotion campaign.

Another approach would be for the Health Ministry to embark on policies that would help to create an enabling environment for healthy living and healthy eating, while at the same time introducing measures to make unhealthy foods more expensive, and healthy foods more accessible and affordable.

To some extent government inaction has contributed to the current NCDs crisis in TT and the rest of the region. One example is the failure of regional governments to implement policies to eliminate industrially-produced trans-fats from the food supply. This issue was considered important enough to be specifically identified in the Port of Spain Declaration of 2007 which was issued at the end of the special Caricom Heads of Government Meeting that discussed the problem of chronic NCDs in the region.

When will the population be educated about the dangers of trans-fats and the association of trans-fats with heart disease? When will the Health Ministry update the population about its response to the PAHO Plan of Action 2020-2025 for the elimination of trans-fats?

Other policy measures that require government action include regulating the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children, introducing octagonal front-of-package nutrition warning labels, developing a comprehensive national school nutrition policy, and formulating national dietary guidelines.

Regarding the call in the editorial for a holistic approach to tackling the NCDs crisis, one suggestion is for the government to support the WHO recommendation to make every school a health-promoting school. That journey can be started by adopting all of the measures recommended for implementation by the Ministry of Education in a document known as the National Strategic Plan for the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases: TT 2017-2021.

IAN GREEN

Couva