Policies to remove industrially produced trans fatty acids from local foods should be in place by December next year.
Minister of Health and Wellness, Senator Dr. The Most Honourable Jerome Walcott, made this disclosure during the opening ceremony of the two-day Small Island Developing States (SIDS) High-Level Technical Meeting on NCDs and Mental Health at the Hilton Barbados Resort, this morning. It is being hosted by the Ministry of Health and Wellness, the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization.
The move to crack down on trans fats is among efforts such as food labelling, taxes on unhealthy foods and campaigns to limit the amount of sugar in drinks to combat non-communicable diseases (NCDs), in the face of commercial determinants.
“Commercial determinants of health and trade are also important drivers of NCDs in SIDS. [They are] defined as the private sector activities that affect people’s health positively or negatively. Underpinning the commercial determinants of health is an understanding that large, multinational companies can exercise broad influence on the economic, physical, social and cultural environments in which people live,” the Health Minister explained.
He added: “In fact, through their influence on food prices, availability, and advertising, trade agreements and policies, they have accelerated the nutritional shift away from traditional diets, resulting in increased levels of obesity, food insecurity and NCDs. Sometimes, due to the size and nature of the commercial actors involved, governments in SIDS face impossible odds in securing regulatory protection to improve health. This is particularly true where government resources and budgets may be dwarfed by the size and scale of multinational companies, state-owned enterprises, and foreign commercial actors.”
Additionally, Dr. Walcott said these entities were also associated with climate change and greater social and economic burdens on “already underfunded and fragile health systems”.
“With health, it is imperative to examine the role of commercial actors. Understanding these commercial determinants of health, the power balances inherent within them, and the critical role of global governance is an important step in supporting SIDS to improve health outcomes,” Minister Walcott said.
He further noted that small island developing states shared a disproportionately high burden of the risk factors, morbidity, and premature mortality caused by non-communicable diseases, mental health conditions, and their determinants.
According to Dr. Walcott, 52 per cent of people, aged 30 to 69 with NCDs in SIDS countries, are dying prematurely, and with risk factors showing that 28 per cent of adults, aged 18 and above, do not engage in enough physical activity.
Additionally, 23 per cent smoke tobacco, while 56 per cent are overweight, with half of these being obese. In addition, the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 estimates, that 15.2 per cent of the Caribbean population has a mental disorder, needing intervention.
Furthermore, in SIDS, suicide rates were disproportionately high compared to global averages, he stated, noting that childhood obesity rates remained on the increase, particularly in the western Pacific region.
“To combat these issues, it is clear that multi-sectoral and whole-of-government approaches are required, especially for action on the environmental, economic and social determinants of health.
“This SIDS meeting now provides the opportunity for technical and scientific staff to deliberate and make recommendations to the ministerial meeting to be held here in Barbados in June, and, ultimately, to have the outputs of these two meetings feed the international agenda for NCDs,” stated the Health Minister.