Tatil and Tatil Life gave this year’s Black Fri­day a whole new mean­ing and colour, Blue Fri­day, in com­mem­o­ra­tion of World Di­a­betes Day which is cel­e­brat­ed to­day.

“In Trinidad and To­ba­go, we are al­so cel­e­brat­ing Di­vali so we took the de­ci­sion to recog­nise the di­a­betes thrust in Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day,” Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Tatil Musa Ibrahim said.

The in­sur­ance com­pa­ny took on the di­a­betes cause as its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty one year ago and ac­cord­ing to Ibrahim it’s be­cause, through its life and health poli­cies, Tatil Gen­er­al and Tatil Life, they see the se­vere ef­fects of the ill­ness.

“Our ob­jec­tive re­al­ly is to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion so that every­one can be aware of what this dis­ease does to in­di­vid­u­als, “Ibrahim said.

On Fri­day, Tatil em­ploy­ees wore blue, some even in­cor­po­rat­ed their Di­vali wear with the cause.

The ex­te­ri­or of the build­ing was cov­ered with blue ban­ners with mes­sages in Tri­ni di­alect to get the at­ten­tion of those who passed by.

One fly­er read, “Keep con­trol of yuh sug­ar,” while an­oth­er said, “make ex­er­cise a big ting.”

But the biggest poster had the most im­por­tant mes­sage the com­pa­ny’s theme, ‘Di­a­betes a fam­i­ly con­cern.’

Ibrahim said, “A lot of peo­ple be­lieve that it’s a nor­mal thing to have high or el­e­vate blood glu­cose lev­els, our goal re­al­ly is to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion that liv­ing with ab­nor­mal­ly high sug­ar lev­els is not a good thing.”

Ac­cord­ing to 2018 World Life Ex­pectan­cy da­ta, Trinidad and To­ba­go was third in the num­ber of deaths caused by di­a­betes in the world. In 2019 the Min­istry of Health es­ti­mat­ed that the dis­ease af­fects about 14.5 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion with about 88-90 per cent of pa­tients hav­ing Type 2 di­a­betes.

There was a grow­ing con­cern that the av­er­age di­a­betes age was de­clin­ing with more and more younger peo­ple test­ing pos­i­tive for Type 2 di­a­betes.

It’s for this rea­son, Ibrahim said Tatil’s goal is to work with the Min­istry of Health to help ac­com­plish the Min­istry’s 25/25 vi­sion to re­duce di­a­betes by 25 per cent by 2025.

“It’s re­al­ly to mo­ti­vate fam­i­lies, mo­ti­vate com­mu­ni­ties and mo­ti­vate in­di­vid­u­als to one be­come aware, be con­scious of the dis­ease and in fact, those that do have the dis­ease how they can change their lifestyle, how they can take small step to­wards cor­rect­ing and im­prov­ing them­selves com­ing out of that dis­ease hope­ful­ly one day,” he said.

But even with their own theme, Tatil Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor recog­nised the sig­nif­i­cance of the glob­al mes­sage.

This year’s World Di­a­betes Day theme - ‘Nurs­es make the dif­fer­ence’, fo­cus­es on pro­mot­ing the role of nurs­es in the pre­ven­tion and man­age­ment of di­a­betes.

Ibrahim said the cam­paign was time­ly and ap­pro­pri­ate es­pe­cial­ly be­cause of every­thing nurs­es en­dured dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“On be­half of Tatil and Tatil Life and the en­tire ANSA McAL Group we recog­nise nurs­es as a key piv­otal role in com­bat­ting this dis­ease and sup­port­ing our lifestyles,” he said.

“We love you guys, we need you guys,” he added.