Chair of the Barbados Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition, Suleiman Bulbulia is urging Barbadians to take their health seriously, amid rising cases of hypertension and heart disease, particularly among young people.
He said statistics over the years have pointed to a worrying increase in health complications across every age group of Barbadian society, with a higher number of younger persons included in those numbers.
“The experts are telling us that more and more young persons are presenting with these type of lifestyle illnesses; these are things that can be reversed, these are things that we don’t need to necessarily have,” Bulbulia said as his organisation along with the Childhood Obesity Prevention Programme of the Heart & Stroke Foundation presented gym equipment to the Christ Church Foundation School.
“If more young people are presenting with [heart diseases], then we definitely have a problem. Younger and younger persons are presenting with hypertension, with diabetes, with cancer as well, and so we recognise it’s coming from the foods and the lifestyle habits that we have, and so we now have to pay attention to that.”
Bulbulia praised the Government’s push to bring more nutritional awareness to Barbadians, and for its own focus on the importance of nutrition.
“The Ministry of Agriculture is now called the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Nutritional Security, so they have added nutritional security and that is an important point. That needs to be built out more now in our society, where we are not only looking at food security but we are looking at nutritional security.
“What is it that we are consuming, what is it that we are eating, what are the ingredients involved in the items we import into Barbados? I see the trust now for locally grown foods and that is important,” he added.
Bulbulia also stressed the importance of front-of-package labelling, which is a tool to inform consumers which products contain excessive amounts of sugars, total fats, saturated fats, trans fats, and sodium.
“That also needs to be done with immediate effect because Barbadians generally need to know what they are consuming, and front-of-package labelling allows for the average person to see what they are consuming,” he said.
“If it’s high in sugar, if it’s high in salt, they need to know that upfront – not a fine print at the back of a product – and that has worked in a number of countries. We have looked at South American countries that it has made a tremendous impact where there is front-of-package labelling happening. Those are the types of things we are calling for.”
Education Officer in the Ministry of Education, Hedda Phillips-Boyce, who was on hand for the presentation, delivered remarks on behalf of Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer- Bradshaw and said the Ministry was very aware of the health crisis facing young students, and was aiming to work with other stakeholders to address it.
“Research conducted by Professor Anne St. John and by Dr Pamela Gaskin has revealed that 1 out of every 3 of our children is overweight. Additionally, there is an increase in the number of children who have contracted Type 2 Diabetes and elevated blood pressure,” Phillips-Boyce pointed out.
“Regrettably, treating non-communicable diseases in Barbados is placing a strain on our health care system, resulting in spending approximately $63 million annually. The Ministry of Education and other stakeholders are very concerned about the decline in some of our children’s health and will aim to wrestle this vexing issue as a united front to change this narrative. We cannot fight this issue alone we need every Barbadian to join the fight,” she added. (SB)
