Minister Tufton Warns of ‘Silent’ Health Disaster Linked to Life-style Decisions – Jamaica Information Service

Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, has warned that Jamaica is going through a silent well being disaster pushed by life-style selections and consumption patterns, which he described as extra extreme than the COVID-19 pandemic.

He made the disclosure whereas addressing residents on the official handover ceremony for the newly renovated Oxford Community Health Centre in St. Mary on February 13.

Noting that prevention is at all times “better than cure”, Dr. Tufton pressured that life-style selections and consumption patterns should be understood inside a broader nationwide context.

“If you look at the data globally, Jamaica is in the top-10 countries in the world in terms of per-capita consumption of sugary drinks,” he stated.

Describing sugar as an “empty calorie”, the Minister famous that elevated blood sugar ranges ensuing from poor consumption habits are more and more mirrored within the nation’s well being profile.

“If you look at our health profile as a population, obesity, diabetes [and] hypertension are the main drivers of our sick profile, which leads to about 18 to 20,000 deaths every year in our country,” he stated, noting that greater than 75 per cent of those are linked to life-style selections.

Dr. Tufton emphasised that tackling the difficulty would require a complete, multi‑sectoral method.

“Laws are used to guide and improve the life, the quality and the longevity of the lives of our people and, in the case of health, we have to tackle, on a multi-pronged basis, the challenges that we face,” he declared.

“So while taxes are used for many things and justified on many grounds, in the case of sugary drinks, there is a very strong health argument around why we need to discourage consumption,” Dr. Tufton added.

However, the Minister made it clear that the Government just isn’t pursuing a confrontational stance.

“We’re not beating up on manufacturers. What we’re saying is that you can use policy to guide behaviour in a positive way. My view on it, as Minister of Health, is not to quarrel with anybody. In fact, it is to reach out to the manufacturers to explain the challenges that we face from a health perspective,” he added.

Dr. Tufton famous that the options embrace reformulation – decreasing the sugar content material in drinks – in addition to adjusting packaging to help measurement and portion management.

“All Government is saying… [to] the manufacturing sector [is] work with us to evolve to the next level, because we have a big problem,” he stated.

Dr. Tufton additional underscored the heavy pressure that non‑communicable illnesses (NCDs) are inserting on Jamaica’s healthcare system.

“The healthcare cost of persons who are obese, who are diabetic, who are hypertensive, who have cardiovascular disease is escalating at a pace where we cannot build enough hospital beds, operating theatres, [and] hire enough doctors… to deal with the demand if we don’t control through prevention,” he defined.

“It is not sustainable for a society that has a runaway sick profile, where people are having earlier onset of illnesses and where people are dying prematurely. If you say the lifespan is 74 years for men and 76 for women, data is currently pointing us in that direction,” the Minister stated.

While describing the state of affairs as “a worse crisis than the COVID crisis was”, Dr. Tufton affirmed that the Government stays dedicated to selling more healthy life-style selections and inspiring extra well being‑searching for behaviours amongst Jamaicans.

“What we hope to come out of this is more messaging around prevention… that prevention is always cheaper [and] better than cure,” he stated.