October 9th, 2015 -- A Caribbean academic is urging regional governments to increase collaboration with the international community to enhance measures to prevent the adverse effects of both communicable diseases and the “importation of chronic diseases” into the Caribbean with the consequential health and economic burden on regional economies.
Former Adjunct Professor of Medicine, University of the West Indies, , and Honorary Consultant Physician and Cardiologist, Dr Sir Trevor Hassell said the region’s economies lack in many instances the funding, technical support and sometimes the expertise to combat the negative impact of diseases; and therefore there is a need for enhanced levels of support for these Small Island States of the Caribbean from the international community.
“Very often, when we discuss the communicable and non-communicable diseases we do so almost exclusively from the health perspective with emphasis on sickness and death, but these diseases have a significant adverse impact on development with the potential to slow or reverse the gains achieved in the region over the past several decades. There is therefore a need to convey to the international community that the issue of communicable and non-communicable diseases requires special consideration in the particularly vulnerable countries of the Caribbean,” he said.
Dr Hassell noted that the international community should assist countries in the region in the development, implementation and sustainability of best practice disease monitoring and surveillance. . He said it is important that the international community become aware of the “tremendous susceptibility” of the region to both communicable and non-communicable diseases and lend technical support to the region to make the people of the region less susceptible and vulnerable with the taking of swift measures to prevent these diseases entering the region from developed countries.
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Dr Hassell, who is also President of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition: a civil society regional alliance for combating chronic diseases, charged that the region is also facing specific challenges due to globalization. He said many chronic diseases have proliferated in the region as people adopt the living habits of individuals in developed countries.
Thus by way of example, said Dr Hassell, some40 years ago, there were very few fast food restaurants in the Caribbean and sugar sweetened beverages and ultra-processed foods were not consumed to any appreciable extent. However presently, there is a proliferation of fast food restaurants and the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages and ultra processed foods has increased exponentially leading to obesity and resulting chronic diseases., ,” he added.
The doctor argues that in order to combat the occurrences of these illnesses, Caribbean countries need to come together and “work more effectively as a region” with greater support of PAHO/WHO and adopting a “whole of society “ approach that includes, governments, the private sector and civil society working together. He cautioned that in collaborating in efforts to prevent and control chronic diseases, there was need for transparency and sensitivity of conflict of interest issues.
But he added,
The 9th WARFS Conference will be hosted by American University of Antigua College of Medicine (AUA) on the beautiful twin island state of Antigua & Barbuda.
The conference is themed: Risk factor surveillance in the 21st century - Consolidating the past – looking into the future.
Other topics to be discussed include:
- The role of big data and risk factor surveillance – ethical concerns, technical issues.
- Is the traditional epidemiological view of surveillance valid in the 21st century?
- Are we caught in traditional thinking? The role of positive health.
- How can NCD surveillance assist in major communicable disease outbreaks?
- Inequity in capacity – how to enhance capacity in developing countries.
- The conference’s keynote, plenary sessions, and concurrent presentations will be held November 1820 at the Sandals Grande
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