Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

In ad­di­tion to tack­ling crime and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and Tu­na­puna MP Roger Alexan­der says he is al­so seek­ing to raise health con­scious­ness in so­ci­ety.

Speak­ing with re­porters dur­ing a health fair at his con­stituen­cy of­fice at the cor­ner of El Do­ra­do Road and Green Street on Sat­ur­day, Alexan­der said the ges­ture was in­tend­ed to show his con­tin­ued sup­port for the health and well-be­ing of his con­stituents fol­low­ing the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

He not­ed that apart from crime and in­fra­struc­ture, health was an­oth­er key is­sue that emerged dur­ing his in­ter­ac­tions with the com­mu­ni­ty while cam­paign­ing and he thought it was nec­es­sary to be­gin the first phase of an in­ter­ven­tion with Sat­ur­day’s event.

Alexan­der al­so ac­knowl­edged that men tra­di­tion­al­ly did not un­der­go screen­ing or check-ups for lifestyle dis­eases like hy­per­ten­sion and di­a­betes un­til it was too late. He urged them to take a more ac­tive in­ter­est in their per­son­al health, as it could mean the dif­fer­ence be­tween life and death.

He al­so said the ini­tia­tive was not lim­it­ed to the Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy as sev­er­al peo­ple from out­side the area were present.

“Take care of your­self and check your­self at every op­por­tu­ni­ty. Your health is your wealth,” Alexan­der said.

“There are a num­ber of peo­ple here who are not from Tu­na­puna but they won’t be turned away. There are a num­ber of young peo­ple in there as well and that’s what we want to see, check your­self be­fore you wreck your­self.”

Alexan­der said he would al­so pitch the idea of height­ened health con­scious­ness to oth­er Cab­i­net col­leagues and fel­low MPs, with the in­ten­tion of hav­ing more in­ter­ac­tive plat­forms for med­ical screen­ing for their con­stituents in the fu­ture.

The health fair was the re­sult of a part­ner­ship be­tween Alexan­der’s of­fice and the Health and Nu­tri­tion As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, which of­fered free test­ing for blood sug­ar, eye­sight, blood pres­sure and oth­er cat­e­gories of lifestyle dis­eases, to­geth­er with con­sul­ta­tion on chron­ic ill­ness­es.

Pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Nan­dani Samuel, told Guardian Me­dia that her group has sought to raise aware­ness on dif­fer­ent lifestyle dis­eases and the sim­ple ad­just­ments that can be made to see sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in their qual­i­ty of life.

“We would have done over 30-some­thing health fairs from last No­vem­ber to now in both pri­vate and pub­lic health sec­tors, but this is the first time we’re team­ing up with a min­is­ter but we won’t stop here. We will con­tin­ue some move­ment to make T&T health­i­er,” Samuel said.