Deaths due to Chron­ic Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (CNCDs) such as heart dis­ease, stroke, di­a­betes and can­cer ac­count for 60 per cent of to­tal deaths in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with can­cer be­ing the sec­ond lead­ing cause of deaths among adults. Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health, CNCDs con­tin­ued to be a grow­ing epi­dem­ic in this coun­try. It is a fact that mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tors and life choic­es con­tribute to the in­creased preva­lence of CNCDs. It is in recog­ni­tion of this the min­istry has em­barked on a num­ber of na­tion­al strate­gies to in­flu­ence per­son­al be­hav­iours and lifestyle choic­es by pro­mot­ing healthy choic­es and there­fore mit­i­gat­ing the im­pact of these mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tors on CNCDs.

These health pro­mo­tion and ill­ness pre­ven­tion ini­tia­tives fo­cus on the in­di­vid­ual, the com­mu­ni­ty and the na­tion­al so­ci­ety. The in­tent of this strat­e­gy is to pos­i­tive­ly in­flu­ence life choic­es with re­spect to:

• prop­er di­et;

• reg­u­lar ex­er­cise;

• main­tain­ing a healthy body weight and Body Mass In­dex (BMI);

• pro­mot­ing the re­spon­si­ble use of al­co­hol;

• say­ing no to drugs and avoid­ing the use of drugs;

• not smok­ing; and

• the avoid­ance of high risk be­hav­iours, in­clud­ing, un­safe sex­u­al prac­tices.

The Min­istry of Health through pol­i­cy, as part of its na­tion­al pre­ven­ta­tive strat­e­gy con­tin­ues to over­see im­ple­men­ta­tion of the To­bac­co Act, 1999 and en­sure a smoke-free en­vi­ron­ment for all cit­i­zens. Screen­ing and ear­ly de­tec­tion con­tin­ues to be a cor­ner­stone strat­e­gy of the Min­istry's ar­se­nal in re­duc­ing the mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with can­cer.