Obesity Killing Bajans
July 28, 2006
IN BARBADOS, obesity is the single largest preventable cause of death.
Yet, inflated by runaway obesity, more than half this island's population run the risk of dying prematurely due to an unpleasant and untimely chronic illness-related disease.
The statistics were grim, said Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr John Licorish, adding that 64 per cent of Barbadian women and 56 per cent of men now were either overweight or obese.
There was more bad news. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is predicting that diabetes, which affects about 17 per cent of the population throughout the Caribbean, "will double by 2025".
"That means that some 34 per cent of the people in the Caribbean will have
diabetes," the doctor noted in an interview with
the MIDWEEK NATION yesterday.
The good news, Licorish earlier told an audience of stakeholders
attending a Ministry of Health Consultation on a National
Health Promotion Policy for Barbados at the Pan American
Health Organisation (PAHO) headquarters in Dayrell's Road
yesterday, was that "obesity is the single largest
preventable cause of death".
"And this is not just a Barbados problem," he said in a later interview. "This is a Caribbean problem, this is a worldwide problem."
A much more embracing issue addressed at the day-long conference attended by a cross-section of Government health representatives, doctors and international experts on the implementation of health-related policy, was "a wider environmental issue", said Licorish.
"It is one thing to flog a message and tell people to eat right and to eat safely," he said. "But if you are in an environment where food is not healthy, for example, and two unhealthy choices are in front of you, you'll take one of them. If a healthy choice involves walking a half-mile down the road (to get to it), you might not take it."
Despite the fact that most countries "have very good education and strategies, most countries are also faced with this problem we have here now", he said.
Most people, he maintained, were quite well aware of what was a healthy food and what was not, but still preferred to make a choice which might not be to their benefit.
Yesterday's meeting aimed to carve out a strategy that would address some of the issues which now cost Barbadian taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical and hospital care.
Closing the gap that exists between knowledge and behaviour is a key objective when it comes to obesity and its link to chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and coronary artery disease.
http://www.nationnews.com/story/286646527505899.php
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