In an ad­dress to the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) High-Lev­el Meet­ing on the Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol of Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases in New York on Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, to con­sid­er the ap­point­ment of a spe­cial en­voy to deal with the is­sue of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. The T&T Prime Min­is­ter al­so called on world lead­ers to do what is re­quired to en­sure that the in­ci­dence of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases are re­duced by a quar­ter by 2025.

We en­dorse whole­heart­ed­ly both of the ap­peals made by the Prime Min­is­ter in her speech at the UN meet­ing and con­cur with her fo­cus on the range of ill­ness­es which fall un­der the rubric non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. The scale of the prob­lem is cap­tured in a World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion pre­dic­tion that by 2030, deaths due to chron­ic non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases are ex­pect­ed to in­crease to 52 mil­lion a year while deaths caused by in­fec­tious dis­eases, ma­ter­nal and peri­na­tal con­di­tions and nu­tri­tion­al de­fi­cien­cies are ex­pect­ed to de­cline by sev­en mil­lion a year dur­ing the same pe­ri­od. These in­clude heart dis­ease, stroke, can­cer, asth­ma, di­a­betes and chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease. What these dis­eases have in com­mon is that they progress slow­ly, can af­fect pro­duc­tiv­i­ty over a long pe­ri­od and they can be mit­i­gat­ed by lifestyle changes.

What these dis­eases al­so have in com­mon is that many of them-such as heart dis­ease, di­a­betes and kid­ney dis­ease caused by high blood pres­sure-have reached al­most epi­dem­ic sta­tus in T&T. While it is ap­pro­pri­ate, there­fore, for the Prime Min­is­ter to call on the UN to ap­point a glob­al spe­cial en­voy to in­crease aware­ness of the is­sue and to fo­cus at­ten­tion on a tar­get­ed glob­al re­duc­tion of these dis­eases, it would al­so be quite in or­der for the coun­try's leader to make this a fo­cus of her ad­min­is­tra­tion. In this re­gard, the Prime Min­is­ter should con­sid­er the ap­point­ment of a lo­cal spe­cial en­voy and seek the con­sen­sus of the lo­cal med­ical com­mu­ni­ty on what is an ap­pro­pri­ate tar­get for the re­duc­tion of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases in this coun­try. While news re­ports of young men be­ing cut down in the prime of their lives by bul­lets and chil­dren dy­ing from dengue haem­or­rhag­ic dis­ease are like­ly to cap­ture the pub­lic's at­ten­tion, much more in­sid­i­ous, and preva­lent, are the suf­fer­ing and deaths caused by di­a­betes, high blood pres­sure and some large­ly pre­ventable can­cers such as lung can­cer. The Prime Min­is­ter, then, should lever­age her speech to the UN body to fo­cus the coun­try's at­ten­tion, like nev­er be­fore, on the lifestyle changes that peo­ple can make that would re­duce the in­ci­dence of these dis­eases.

Such changes in­clude elim­i­nat­ing the use of to­bac­co prod­ucts, en­sur­ing that ex­er­cise be­comes part of the na­tion­al ethos, re­duc­ing the amount of emp­ty calo­ries that are con­sumed and en­sure that the in­ci­dence of obe­si­ty in the coun­try is re­duced. In ef­fect, the Prime Min­is­ter should be­come the na­tion­al leader of The Biggest Los­er syn­drome, there­by en­cour­ag­ing the na­tion to lose weight, lose the cig­a­rette habit, lose the seden­tary lifestyle and lose the amount of sug­ar and salt that the na­tion con­sumes. If she were to per­son­alise this bat­tle against non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases-which has touched her own fam­i­ly as it has touched the fam­i­lies of thou­sands of peo­ple across the coun­try-the Prime Min­is­ter would be mak­ing a much greater con­tri­bu­tion to the health of the na­tion than a one-off speech at a UN func­tion. While we en­dorsed the Prime Min­is­ter's strong sup­port of the Chil­dren's Life Fund, it may be time for the Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar to take her ad­vo­ca­cy to a new lev­el by get­ting be­hind the is­sue of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases.