Chester Sam­bra­no

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is at­tend­ing the High-Lev­el Week of the 78th Ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

In a state­ment the Min­istry of Health said this comes at a time when health is­sues are at the fore­front of the glob­al mul­ti­lat­er­al agen­da.

The Min­istry said yes­ter­day, the Min­is­ter par­tic­i­pat­ed as a pan­el­list in the Launch of the First World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) Hy­per­ten­sion Re­port along­side WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al, Dr. Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus, Mr. Michael R. Bloomberg, WHO Glob­al Am­bas­sador for Non­Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (NCDs), Dr. Bente Mikkelsen, NCD Di­rec­tor, WHO, as well as Min­is­ters of Health of Ghana, Sene­gal and the Philip­pines.

It said, "Trinidad and To­ba­go was rec­og­nized for its pro­gres­sive ef­forts to scale-up hy­per­ten­sion con­trol and for its com­mit­ment to rein­vig­o­rate progress to­wards de­liv­er­ing health for all."

The Min­istry said that in his open­ing re­marks, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh reaf­firmed that Trinidad and To­ba­go led the glob­al charge against NCDs and since 2007, placed this crit­i­cal health is­sue on the agen­da of the Unit­ed Na­tions.

It added that Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh high­light­ed ef­forts made by Trinidad and To­ba­go to im­ple­ment the HEARTS pro­gramme, which is the flag­ship ini­tia­tive of the WHO to re­duce the bur­den of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, the lead­ing cause of death and dis­abil­i­ty world­wide.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh al­so out­lined the progress achieved at the na­tion­al lev­el, as it re­lates to com­mit­ments to scale-up Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al NCD re­sponse.

The Min­istry stat­ed that in shar­ing the na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence on progress made, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh in­formed the meet­ing that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21,000 peo­ple were en­rolled in the HEARTS pro­gramme, with 37 per­cent, con­trolled.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh an­nounced the ob­jec­tive to achieve 13 per­cent con­trol by the end of 2024, ahead of the 2050 time­frame.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Min­is­ter re­flect­ed on the chal­lenges faced in the con­trol of NCDs in Trinidad and To­ba­go.