Advocates Needed In Fight Against NCDs
By: , June 15, 2022
Photo: Dave Reid
Health Minister, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton (left), pauses for a photo with Food 4 Change representative, Jordan Dressikie, at the closing ceremony for the Food and Nutrition (FaN) Caribbean project and launch of the Jamaica Council of Churches sermon series, at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel on Tuesday (June 14).
Photo: Dave Reid
Health Minister, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton (second left), greets Canadian High Commissioner to Jamaica, Her Excellency Emma Tudakovic (second right) at the closing ceremony for the Food and Nutrition (FaN) Caribbean project. Looking on is Principal Investigator on the FaN project, Professor Alafia Smith (left) and PAHO/WHO Representative in Jamaica, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, Ian Stein (right). The event was held at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in Kingston on Tuesday (June 14).
Photo: Dave Reid
Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, addresses the launch of the Jamaica Council of Churches sermon series and closing ceremony for the Food and Nutrition (FaN) Caribbean project. The event was held at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel on Tuesday (June 14).The Full Story
Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, is calling on Jamaicans to become activists in the fight against non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that are brought on by poor lifestyle choices.
Speaking at the launch of the Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC) sermon series on Tuesday (June 14) at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel, Minister Tufton said that although the Government is taking action around issues such as industrial trans-fats, “we need advocates for this worthy cause.
“We need people who can influence to say to those who look to them for leadership [that they should]… seek out what they consume and be satisfied that [it] is, in fact, good for them,” he declared.
According to the Minister, some 90 per cent of persons who died after contracting COVID-19 were also found to have an underlying condition such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer.
He says the benefits of lifestyle change, including diet and exercise, is, therefore, a crucial message that needs to be continuously spread amongst Jamaicans in a widescale manner.
“I want to see activists… . We need it to be preached from the pulpit, or from the football field and in the Parliament, and by everybody,” the Minister said.
The JCC sermon series is a public awareness programme that will be promoting healthy eating and lifestyle choices among the Jamaican faith-based community by utilising data from research, fact sheets, videos and bible studies.
The initiative is in collaboration with the just-concluded Food and Nutrition (FaN) Caribbean project, which, over a four-year period has seen a number of successes in its goal of investigating and influencing national food systems in Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and St Kitts and Nevis.
The FaN project is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and is supported by CARICOM, the University of the West Indies, the Caribbean Institute for Health Research, the University of Technology (Jamaica), McGill University, and the Canadian Government.