Minister of Health, John Boyce, during the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) lunchtime lecture on Friday.
Major HEALTH concern
Sun, 11/20/2016 - 12:00am
Boyce: Barbadians must do more to prevent NCDs
By:
By Cara L. Foster
BARBADIANS can easily avoid high health risk factors.
This point was made by Minister of Health, John Boyce, during the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) lunchtime lecture on Friday.
“Some of these vital risk factors are avoidable and this is the portion that is within our own control,” he said.
The Minister explained that there has been an epidemiological transition in Barbados from a profile of infectious diseases, typical of developing countries, to a profile of NCDs and lifestyle diseases, typical of developed countries, highlighting that the major health risks in Barbados are unhealthy eating habits, physical inactivity, obesity, tobacco and alcohol use, unsafe sexual practices, violence and accidents.
“Therefore, we on the one hand have been able to successfully deal with communicable diseases, but here we are with a range of other issues which are now fundamental in the cost of health-care delivery and some of these (diseases) are avoidable,” he said.
Boyce said that although much has been achieved over the past 50 years in relation to the health-care development in Barbados, there is still so much more that needs to be done to improve it. He revealed that the ministry is facing some existing challenges and he said that it would require a major effort from all of us to fix them.
The minister said that the ministry recognised that non-communicable diseases continue to constitute a great threat to all the gains in the health status and quality of life that was made over several years. He divulged that the provision of pharmaceutical drugs free of cost for children under the age of 16 and persons over the age of 65 added another layer of improvement to quality healthcare, explaining that persons living with chronic conditions such as asthma, hypertension, epilepsy, diabetes and some cancers, were entitled to receive drugs at subsidised rates, but by this time NCDs were on the increase and the transition from communicable diseases to non-communicable diseases was the major cause of ill health.
Boyce divulged that there was “some strong evidence that lifestyle has done a lot in creating these NCD epidemics”. He posited that as human beings we can help to improve these outcomes by simply leading a lifestyle that leads to healthier eating and drinking coupled with regular exercise.