Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Health of Trinidad and To­ba­go is urg­ing cit­i­zens to adopt health­i­er lifestyles and take ac­tion against obe­si­ty as the coun­try marked World Obe­si­ty Day un­der the theme “8 Bil­lion Rea­sons to Act on Obe­si­ty.”

In a joint mes­sage, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health Dr Rishad Seecher­an de­scribed obe­si­ty as a com­plex, chron­ic dis­ease that in­creas­es the risk of di­a­betes, heart dis­ease, can­cer and res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness. They said it al­so car­ries sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic, psy­cho­log­i­cal and so­cial con­se­quences.

They cit­ed glob­al es­ti­mates in­di­cat­ing that one bil­lion peo­ple are liv­ing with obe­si­ty, a fig­ure pro­ject­ed to reach four bil­lion by 2035. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, the 2024 STEPS Sur­vey found that near­ly two-thirds of adults are over­weight and al­most one-third are obese—a sharp in­crease since 2011.

Child­hood obe­si­ty was al­so iden­ti­fied as a grow­ing con­cern, with one in three Caribbean chil­dren over­weight or obese and fac­ing long-term health risks.

The min­istry said it has strength­ened school nu­tri­tion stan­dards in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and con­tin­ues to pro­mote healthy be­hav­iours through ini­tia­tives such as the Step in­to Well­ness cam­paign. The min­is­ters en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to choose wa­ter over sug­ary drinks, take the stairs, aim for 4,000 to 7,000 steps dai­ly, in­clude veg­eta­bles with each meal and read food la­bels to make health­i­er choic­es.

They al­so called for peo­ple liv­ing with obe­si­ty to be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and re­spect.

Mean­while, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) called for ur­gent, co­or­di­nat­ed re­gion­al ac­tion to pre­vent child­hood obe­si­ty and cre­ate health­i­er food en­vi­ron­ments.

Cit­ing the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO), CARPHA de­scribed obe­si­ty as a “chron­ic, re­laps­ing dis­ease” in­flu­enced by ge­net­ics, eat­ing be­hav­iours, ac­cess to healthy di­ets and wider en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors. The agency not­ed that non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases re­main the lead­ing cause of ill­ness, dis­abil­i­ty and death in the re­gion.

CARPHA al­so ref­er­enced da­ta from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO), show­ing that The Ba­hamas, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Be­lize rank among the top 20 per cent of coun­tries glob­al­ly with the high­est preva­lence of over­weight and obe­si­ty.

The agency con­tin­ues to ad­vance its Six-Point Pol­i­cy Pack­age, de­vel­oped with the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Sec­re­tari­at in 2017, which fo­cus­es on front-of-pack­age food la­belling, nu­tri­tion stan­dards for schools, reg­u­la­tion of food mar­ket­ing and im­prov­ing the nu­tri­tion­al qual­i­ty of the food sup­ply.

Dr Lisa In­dar, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of CARPHA, said the frame­work rec­om­mends poli­cies that pro­mote health­i­er food en­vi­ron­ments and strength­en food se­cu­ri­ty to re­duce child­hood obe­si­ty. She not­ed that CARPHA, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with PA­HO/WHO, de­vel­oped tech­ni­cal rec­om­men­da­tions in 2025 for nu­tri­tion stan­dards in Caribbean schools aimed at re­duc­ing the avail­abil­i­ty and con­sump­tion of un­healthy foods and bev­er­ages.

The Healthy Caribbean Coali­tion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­ease Al­liance al­so com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go for its up­dat­ed Schools Nu­tri­tion Pol­i­cy, launched on Jan­u­ary 9. The pol­i­cy builds on the 2017 ban on sug­ary drinks in gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed schools and in­tro­duces stricter nu­tri­tion­al lim­its for snacks, stronger stan­dards for school meals and en­hanced mon­i­tor­ing mech­a­nisms.

Mean­while, the Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go said find­ings from the 2024 PA­HO/WHO STEPS Sur­vey show that more than 57 per cent of adults in Trinidad and To­ba­go are over­weight or obese, and over half of some pop­u­la­tion groups are not get­ting enough phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty.

The as­so­ci­a­tion en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to move more, eat bal­anced meals and check their health reg­u­lar­ly, stress­ing that small changes could make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence.