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President of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition (HCC) Sir Trevor Hassell addressing the launch of HCC’s latest report yesterday.

Healthy Caribbean Coalition calls for new NCD agenda

The Healthy Caribbean Coalition (HCC) is calling for a Transformative New Agenda (TNA) for the prevention and control of non-communicable (NCDs) in the Caribbean region.

President Sir Trevor Hassell has warned that the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed inequities and shortcomings in implementation of comprehensive national responses to NCD prevention and control.

He said it has particularly adversely impacted people living with NCDs and other persons in conditions of vulnerability.

“It has gone further and slowed the progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and it has put at risk many of the gains made in reducing premature morality from NCDs, including those with mental and neurological and substance abuse disorders.”

He was at the time addressing yesterday’s webinar to officially launch HCC’s latest report – “NCDs and COVID-19 in the Caribbean: A Call to Action – The Case for a Transformative New NCD Agenda”, made possible by a grant from the NCD Alliance Civil Society Solidarity Fund on NCDs and COVID-19.

“The effects of the pandemic and efforts to contain it have disrupted lives and livelihoods, affected supply chains including for food and nutrition security, and health services have been severely affected,” the HCC President pointed out.

“Even before the pandemic, the United Nations and World Health Organisation (WHO) assessments of advances towards internationally agreed NCD reduction targets, documented a slowing of the progress and an implementation deficit in evidence-based global recommendations. Here in the Caribbean, a 2016 report also demonstrated delays in fulfilment of the commitments. It is therefore against this background that we in the HCC have produced this report.”

HCC Executive Director Maisha Hutton said at the centre of the TNA-NCDs is a call for empowered and mobilised Caribbean citizens to ‘stand up’ for their fundamental human right, to live in an equitable world where CARICOM governments take responsibility for creating environments that support and promote human and planetary health.

As HCC seeks to deliver on the TNA, Hutton further revealed that there are a number of key actions which will be outlined in detail in a two-year action plan. She said this includes ongoing communications campaigns emphasising key TNA principles; hosting of webinars to build support for the TNA across all sectors; development of tools to support implementation of the TNA; and continued advocacy for priority policies with a focus on creating platforms/mechanism to support community based NCD activism to drive political action. (TL)

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