The legacy of colonialism, modern-day conveniences and a diet high in fat and sugar have bequeathed the island a diabetes and high-blood pressure pandemic. But can health plans win out over corporate interests?
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society,” Beckles told Jamaica’s newspaper the Gleaner in 2020. Barbados and Jamaica had become the amputation capitals of the world, he said, as the taste for sugar fuelled the rise of type 2 diabetes.The human toll of non-communicable diseases is huge and rising. These illnesses end the lives of approximately 41 million of the 56 million people who die every year – and three quarters of them are in the developing world.
In low-income countries NCDs – typically slow and debilitating illnesses – are seeing a fraction of the money needed being invested or donated. Attention remains focused on the threats from communicable diseases, yet cancer death rates have long sped past the death toll from malaria, TB and HIV/Aids combined.
“But unlike other territories where this was slowly happening, I’m not sure the Caribbean realised at an early enough stage where our environment was becoming unhealthy. And so for instance, not walking became something to brag about. I don’t have to walk to church, you know, I have a vehicle, or I don’t have to eat food coming from a garden because I can go to the supermarket and buy processed foods.
There are now 15 Chefette outlets in Barbados. KFC has 12 stores, or more than four for every 100,000 people – only the Cayman Islands and Trinidad and Tobago have a higher ratio. The supermarkets are expensive and the shelves are loaded with imported Spam and other tinned meat, salty snacks, sweetened tinned fruit and highly sweetened breakfast cereals.
Mottley has asked the health ministry to look at the possibility of a salt tax, which would be a first in the Caribbean. But the bigger battle Phillips and colleagues are fighting is over food labelling. Some countries are concerned for their homegrown industries. In Trinidad and Tobago, SM Jaleel makes Busta and Chubby drinks for the region. Jamaica has its own processed foods industry. Neither country voted for the warning labels, although Jamaica’s health minister, Christopher Tufton, was strongly in favour, against the position of the island’s ministry of commerce.
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