A dis­cus­sion be­tween Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and fast-food sell­ers with re­gard to pro­vid­ing healthy meals and snacks for chil­dren, most as­sured­ly, “Yes!” How­ev­er, the pro­duc­tion and sale of fast and even “slow foods” must be ex­pand­ed to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and de­signed to reach par­ents and all those who pur­chase and pre­pare meals for the fam­i­ly.

Back in 2007, a Cari­com Sum­mit was held here in Port-of-Spain to recog­nise and make plans to com­bat the spread and im­pact of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs) across the re­gion.

At the Sum­mit, it was record­ed by the then Prime Min­is­ter of St Kitts/Nevis, Dr Den­zil Dou­glas, a med­ical doc­tor whose re­gion­al port­fo­lio in­cor­po­rat­ed health mat­ters, that “non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases ac­count­ed for more than half the bur­den of dis­eases and 80 per cent of the deaths in the poor­er coun­tries which car­ried a dou­ble bur­den of dis­ease.”

The Cari­com lead­ers agreed that “im­me­di­ate ac­tion was need­ed to man­age and con­trol the NCDs.” Out of the con­fer­ence came agree­ments and com­mit­ments by all mem­ber states to, amongst oth­er ac­tions, es­tab­lish com­mis­sions on the health con­di­tion, im­ple­ment leg­is­la­tion to con­trol the spread of NCDs, that re­gion­al coun­tries will es­tab­lish plans by 2008 for the screen­ing and man­age­ment of the chron­ic dis­eases, and a range of oth­er in­ten­tions were com­mit­ted to.

By 2011, a very thor­ough and well-re­searched plan was pro­duced by the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at, PA­HO and the WHO to guide the way for­ward for all mem­ber states in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly. We are not in a po­si­tion to­day to say de­fin­i­tive­ly what lev­el of im­ple­men­ta­tion of the plans have achieved. What is cer­tain, is that the con­trac­tion and im­pact of NCDs are not slow­ing, very like­ly they are gal­lop­ing for­ward.

Re­cent­ly, Pro­fes­sor Hi­lary Beck­les, Vice Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, made a case to a for­eign uni­ver­si­ty au­di­ence in which he not­ed that “more than 60 per cent of all of the peo­ple in the re­gion over the age of 60 ei­ther have hy­per­ten­sion, di­a­betes or both.”

As is his wont on the trail for repa­ra­tion from Britain for its con­tri­bu­tion to in­flict­ing the ex­treme salt and sweet di­et on re­gion­al peo­ples, Pro­fes­sor Beck­les re­ferred to Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos as the “am­pu­ta­tion cap­i­tal of the world,” re­sult­ing from the com­pli­ca­tions from the di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion.

If Pro­fes­sor Beck­les’ the­sis that the his­tor­i­cal caus­es of the con­trac­tion of the NCDs by our an­ces­tors re­sult­ed from the di­et we in the Caribbean were weaned on 500 years ago can be ac­cept­ed, di­etary pat­terns are not fixed in stone; they can be changed.

What is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary at this time is for Health Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh not mere­ly to touch on the out­skirts of the prob­lem with the fast-food op­er­a­tors, but to ex­am­ine the 2011-2015 plan to de­ter­mine what has and what has not been im­ple­ment­ed and to be­gin tak­ing ac­tion.

While half mea­sures can achieve mi­nor ob­jec­tives, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh, who did good work dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, must demon­strate in­ten­tion and re­solve to ad­dress the larg­er prob­lem.

One el­e­ment of a healthy di­et would al­so mean a greater re­liance on food pro­duced in the re­gion as op­posed to im­port­ed frozen food.