Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health Rishad Seecher­an says the Gov­ern­ment will be rolling out sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to tack­le non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs), in­clud­ing warn­ing la­bels on un­healthy foods, aimed at pre­ven­tion, ear­ly de­tec­tion, and man­age­ment.

De­liv­er­ing re­marks at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Heart Foun­da­tion Go Red for Women High Tea and Fash­ion Show at Hy­att Re­gency on Sun­day, the min­is­ter al­so spoke about a new na­tion­al car­diac cen­tre, which would see the wait­ing time for by­pass surg­eries sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced.

Not­ing that glob­al­ly, NCDs ac­count for over 41 mil­lion deaths an­nu­al­ly, he said the fig­ures were worse in the Caribbean, with NCDs re­spon­si­ble for 75 per cent of deaths among peo­ple aged 30 to 70 years.

Seecher­an said the Gov­ern­ment would be em­bark­ing on new ini­tia­tives in the next fis­cal year fo­cused on pre­ven­tion, ear­ly de­tec­tion, and man­age­ment, in­clud­ing pro­grammes tar­get­ing pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school lev­els.

“We pro­pose leg­is­la­tion for front-of-pack­age warn­ing la­belling to high­light foods that are high in sug­ar, sodi­um and fats based on the PA­HO Nu­tri­ent Pro­file Mod­el,” he said.

“This has been used in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions with great ef­fect, and this is some­thing we plan to do here in Trinidad and To­ba­go as well.”

The min­is­ter added that they in­tend to ex­tend, on a phased ba­sis, the open­ing hours of health cen­tres, be­gin­ning with six cen­tres af­ter the midyear bud­get re­view.

In ad­di­tion to new car­diac catheter­i­sa­tion labs in the South West and East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties, he said they in­tend to open a new na­tion­al car­diac cen­tre. De­scrib­ing it as a cen­tre of clin­i­cal ex­cel­lence, he said it will al­low for ad­vanced car­diac in­ter­ven­tion and pro­ce­dures.

“Our goal is to de­crease the wait­ing time of car­diac by­pass surg­eries. Cur­rent­ly, many pa­tients seek­ing by­pass surgery will have to wait months and, in some cas­es, years to ac­cess that surgery, and what we are propos­ing to do is to de­crease that time down to days and per­haps even hours.”

Along­side this fa­cil­i­ty, he said, they pro­pose to es­tab­lish a na­tion­al stroke re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre for spe­cialised care and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. This would al­low pa­tients suf­fer­ing from a stroke the op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­creased mo­bil­i­ty, speech func­tion, and qual­i­ty of life un­der su­per­vised med­ical care.

Seecher­an added that one of the most sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­ven­tions for treat­ment would be the $2 bil­lion Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, which will great­ly ease the strain on oth­er ma­jor hos­pi­tals.

The min­istry, he added, would al­so col­lab­o­rate with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to im­ple­ment the WHO rec­om­men­da­tion to make every school a health-pro­mot­ing school. He said they plan to have doc­tors and nurs­es vis­it pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools to ed­u­cate stu­dents about nu­tri­tion, ex­er­cise, and men­tal health, aimed at NCD pre­ven­tion.