Fifty per cent of T&T women were overweight and children were becoming obese, Health Minister Fuad Khan said yesterday during the budget debate. He said there had been an increase of about 30 per cent in the last ten years where children were concerned.
The situation had led to an increase in non-communicable diseases, including cardiac cases, high blood pressure/stroke, diabetes, people dying younger, people in their 20s and 30s with kidney and other diseases, respiratory diseases and high rates of cancers, all of which, he said, were a result of these lifestyle diseases. He noted his ministry had urged a fight-the-fat campaign and others designed to boost healthy eating and lifestyles.
On T&T’s high diabetes rate, he said the budget allocated $20 million for a diabetic retinopathy treatment system which would help 130,000 people with eye problems arising from diabetes. He said Jamaica wanted to send nurses to T&T as had St Vincent and Grenada. Khan said he was glad to get the help of Communications/Trade Minister Vasant Bharath, who headed a health committee, as health was difficult to manage.
On the cocaine removed from the stomach of a man at a St Augustine private hospital earlier this year, Khan said that was the subject of a police probe and he could not comment. Displaying diagrams, he said, the Point Fortin and Arima hospitals will be built. He said PNM MPs Paula Gopee-Scoon and Amery Browne might not be there if the Prime Minister called an early election instead of in September 2015, particularly since Browne was a protege of former PNM leader Patrick Manning.