NON-COMMUNICABLE diseases (NCDs), such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer, are killing at least 70 per cent of Jamaicans every year. This is according to Health Minister Dr Fenton Ferguson, who in citing a 2010 report said his ministry is not only looking at the curative side of health, but also addressing the risk factors.

“What are the risk factors that are killing our people?” Dr Ferguson questioned. “It is proper diet, physical inactivity, abusive use of alcohol, and tobacco.

“Tobacco use is the worst of them all,” Dr Ferguson continued. “Seventy per cent of the lung cancer cases at the National Chest Hospital (are) directly related to tobacco use.”

Accepting that tobacco taxes contribute to the National Health Fund, which was established to provide financial support to the national health care system, the health minister offered that the negatives far outweigh the positive.

“In truth and in fact, literally for every dollar we get in taxes from tobacco, the negative impact on the health sector relative to use is far, far more,” Dr Ferguson insisted.

Director for Chronic Diseases and Injuries Prevention Dr Tamu Davidson-Saddler explained the health ministry’s three-pronged approach to tackling NCDs.

“We have tabled a national strategic plan… and this is the road map that we have charted through extensive consultation to really addressing NCDs in Jamaica,” Davidson-Saddler told the Jamaica Observer recently.

“It’s a three-pronged approach: one is really ensuring that we monitor what’s happening in terms of the data and research around NCDs, the guide, what we are doing to make sure it is evidence-based; secondly, we reduce the exposure to risk factors that the minister outlined and I can, I guess, now put tobacco at the top of it, which we have addressed by implementing (the) FCTC (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control),” Davidson-Saddler continued.

“The third aspect, the reality, is that NCDs take a very long time to develop, so the cases that we see now are results of exposure that took place 10, 20 years ago and so we call it the elephant in the room, the tsunami or the silent epidemic,” the director for chronic diseases said. “And so the third prong is that we have to ensure, and this is something that we have outlined in the plan, that we take quality of care, evidence-based approach to the management of persons with NCDs.”

Dr Davidson-Saddler also pointed out that as with all chronic conditions, there is the individual component of self-care and self-management.

Speaking about the National Plan for the Prevention of NCDs in Jamaica 2013-2018 in his sectoral presentation earlier this year, Dr Ferguson had said that the plan speaks to a national developmental issue and that in order to be on top of the problem, it would require “an al-Government, all-society approach”.