Sascha Wil­son

Health Min­is­ter Jer­ry Narace said car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease and di­a­betes ac­counts for 40 per cent of deaths in the Caribbean with T&T hav­ing the high­est over­all per­cent­age. Speak­ing at the open­ing of the $4.2 mil­lion Debe Health Cen­tre at Welling­ton Road yes­ter­day, Narace said the Gov­ern­ment was res­olute in re­duc­ing the num­ber of deaths caused by chron­ic non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases.

He said sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta sug­gest­ed that the preva­lence of di­a­betes in the adult pop­u­la­tion was one in every eight per­sons. Not­ing that di­a­betes was more preva­lent among In­do-Trinida­di­ans, he said sta­tis­tics re­vealed 33 per cent of Afro-Trinida­di­an pa­tients at­tend­ing health fa­cil­i­ties were both di­a­bet­ic and hy­per­ten­sive.

Urg­ing peo­ple to take charge of their health, he said the min­istry's core ob­jec­tives were health ed­u­ca­tion and pre­ven­tion.

Giv­en the amount of drug and al­co­hol abuse in Pe­nal/Debe, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said there was a need for the es­tab­lish­ment of a Drug Pre­ven­ta­tive Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre.

Al­so speak­ing at the open­ing of the Debe Health Cen­tre, Mooni­lal said in the Pe­nal/Debe area many peo­ple abuse al­co­hol and drugs which lead to so­cial prob­lems such as do­mes­tic prob­lems and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. He said he in­tends to send cor­re­spon­dence to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty to get the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre off the ground. With re­gards to the health cen­tre, Mooni­lal said there was need for full time phar­ma­cist and a grounds­man to keep the sur­round­ings clean. In ad­di­tion, he said, they re­quire trained peo­ple to show pa­tients how to prop­er­ly use fa­cil­i­ties such as the train­ing and ex­er­cise equip­ment.