It is es­ti­mat­ed that al­most 15 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion has been di­ag­nosed with di­a­betes; too many a con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mate in the ab­sence of up to date da­ta.

In a re­cent study, the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank es­ti­mat­ed that non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases cost this coun­try 8.7 bil­lion dol­lars an­nu­al­ly.

In recog­ni­tion of this fact, the Min­istry of Health launched, The Strate­gic Plan for the Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol of NCDs.

At the top of the list of so­lu­tions, the plan iden­ti­fied pri­vate sec­tor stake­hold­er en­gage­ment.

Yes­ter­day in­sur­ance gi­ant- TATIL and TATIL life an­swered the call, launch­ing an ed­u­ca­tion­al cam­paign ti­tled - Di­a­betes, A fam­i­ly con­cern, in the hope of re­duc­ing the climb­ing sta­tis­tics.

At yes­ter­day’s launch, TATIL’s Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Musa Ibrahim, said: “We have stepped up to the plate and com­mit­ted to play our part in the in­ter­ven­tions nec­es­sary to pro­mote healthy lifestyles de­tec­tion and treat­ment and com­mu­ni­ty out­reach.”

Over the last decade, the al­lo­ca­tion to the health sec­tor has dou­bled. The in­crease has not rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease in in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ments, but it rep­re­sents an in­crease in al­lo­ca­tion ad­dress­ing non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh has stat­ed that the mag­ni­tude of the prob­lem is grow­ing, he said cur­rent­ly, “I am Min­is­ter of Health Care and not Min­is­ter of Health.”

Re­lay­ing sto­ries of per­son­al in­ter­ac­tions with pa­tients in the health sec­tor the Min­is­ter stressed, “if we don’t un­der­stand the bur­den of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases and be­come proac­tive we will have to build a hos­pi­tal on every street cor­ner.”

TATIL’S CSR - cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty - ini­tia­tive is based around the adage “an ounce of pre­ven­tion is worth a pound of cure.”

From med­ical con­fer­ences to health cam­paigns, the mul­ti-lay­ered cam­paign will see sev­er­al part­ner­ships and al­liances with NGO’s such as the Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion and the Bovell Can­cer Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion An­drew Dhan­noo praised the cor­po­rate en­ti­ty for “walk­ing the walk.”

“We now know that chil­dren may die of an NCD be­fore their par­ents; for the first time in his­to­ry you have a child pass­ing away be­fore their par­ents be­cause of a heart at­tack or a stroke and hav­ing their par­ents bury them,” he said.

While the prob­lems of NCD is in­tri­cate­ly linked to lifestyle and food choic­es, the Min­is­ter, said at this time the ad­min­is­tra­tion would not be look­ing to shift fis­cal pol­i­cy on cor­po­rate en­ti­ties to in­flu­ence con­sumer be­hav­iour.

“We feel moral sua­sion is the best way to go at this time; we are not con­sid­er­ing tax­a­tion but a se­ri­ous pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and cam­paign.”

He said de­ci­sions on tax­es and in­cen­tives, will have to be made by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.