Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Al­co­hol con­sump­tion among the pop­u­la­tion of T&T has been in­creas­ing for the past 13 years, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est STEPS Sur­vey of Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (NCDs) con­duct­ed by the Min­istry of Health in 2024.

Dur­ing a sym­po­sium at the min­istry on Wednes­day, sta­tis­tics re­vealed that 51.5 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion had con­sumed al­co­hol in the last 30 days. The 2011 find­ings, mean­while, showed 40.6 per cent con­sump­tion.

Dur­ing the event, di­rec­tor of the min­istry’s NCDs Unit, Dr Maria Clap­per­ton, said al­though men still out­num­ber women in con­sump­tion pat­terns, that gap had been nar­row­ing.

“You will no­tice that there is an in­crease in con­sump­tion pat­terns among fe­males, be­ing a preva­lence re­port­ed of 30.9 per cent in 2011 and an in­creased 43.4 per cent among fe­males in 2024,” she stat­ed.

Speak­ing di­rect­ly to women, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said fe­males were adopt­ing a lifestyle that was usu­al­ly at­trib­uted to men.

“That is not good, my women,” he said.

“The STEPS sur­vey showed that more women are drink­ing more al­co­hol from 2011 to 2024.”

He called on women to be­come am­bas­sadors for good health.

The STEPS sur­vey of NCDs risk fac­tors was con­duct­ed be­tween May and Au­gust 2024 among res­i­dent adults aged 18-69.

A to­tal of 4,052 adults par­tic­i­pat­ed and the sur­vey was con­duct­ed in three phas­es.

“We had a re­sponse rate of 75 per cent for step one, 71.2 per cent for step two and 18.6 per cent for step three,” Dr Clap­per­ton said.

Us­ing a con­fi­dence in­ter­val (a range of val­ues used in sta­tis­tics to es­ti­mate an un­known pop­u­la­tion pa­ra­me­ter) of 95 per cent, Dr Clap­per­ton said 21.3 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion smoked to­bac­co dai­ly.

She said with re­gard to di­et and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, 93.3 per cent of peo­ple re­port­ed con­sum­ing less than five fruits and veg­eta­bles per week. She added that 25.3 per cent of peo­ple en­gaged in at least 150 min­utes of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty per week.

The NCD di­rec­tor said 13.6 per cent of peo­ple re­port­ed that they had ex­pe­ri­enced symp­toms of de­pres­sion in the last year, of which 17.3 per cent were women and 9.9 per cent were male. Hy­per­ten­sion sta­tis­tics showed that 29 per cent of peo­ple had high blood pres­sure.

Clap­per­ton es­ti­mat­ed that 11.8 per cent of those aged 40 to 69 years had a greater than 20 per cent risk of de­vel­op­ing a car­dio­vas­cu­lar event with­in the next ten years. She added that body mass in­dex sta­tis­tics al­so show that 61.2 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion was obese.

Deyals­ingh said he was shocked to learn that the sports min­istry had to pass a cab­i­net note to re­cruit train­ers to teach chil­dren how to play games. He blamed tech­nol­o­gy.

“Let that sink in for a minute; we are now pay­ing peo­ple to go in­to schools to teach chil­dren how to play. Don’t you find that ab­solute­ly in­cred­i­ble? In my day, play was some­thing you do nat­u­ral­ly,” he said.

Re­search of­fi­cer and act­ing reg­is­ter of the Na­tion­al Can­cer Reg­istry, Nkese Fe­lix, shared key find­ings of the Na­tion­al Can­cer Re­port for the pe­ri­od 2003 to 2020.

She said 43,380 peo­ple were di­ag­nosed with can­cer dur­ing the 18 years; one per cent of that num­ber were un­der 14 years, 1.1 per cent were aged 15-24 years, 35 per cent of pa­tients were be­tween 25 and 59 years, 39 per cent of peo­ple were 60 to 74 years, and over 75 con­tributed 23.9 per cent of pa­tients.

In men, the top three lead­ing can­cers were prostate, colon and rec­tum, and bronchus and lung. In women, breast can­cer was the lead­ing form, with the uterus, colon and rec­tum fol­low­ing.