CARIBBEAN Community Health Ministers concluded their conference in Guyana last week on a high note of optimism for the region’s readiness to play an active role in the forthcoming United Nations High Level Meeting on ‘The Prevention and Control of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases’ (CNCDs) scheduled to occur from September 19-20.
The optimism is consistent with CARICOM’s initiatives at various fora  within recent years, including the hosting in Port-of-Spain in 2007 of the first Heads of Government Summit  in the Americas to last month’s meeting in Mexico with a specific ‘Declaration’ for the coming UN event.
The latter resulted in what is now being referenced as  the “Mexico Declaration” ahead of the UN “High Level” focus in September on effective ways to combat non-communicable diseases as an international challenge. Barbados had hosted the preparatory meeting for the Mexico encounter that set the tone for this region’s expectations.
Health Ministers, who participated in last week’s 21st meeting of CARICOM’s Council on Human and Social Development (COSHOD), would be fully aware of the overall challenges facing this region from non-communicable diseases that account for the highest percentage of deaths, with major contributors being hypertension; heart attack; cancer, diabetes, stroke and obesity.
The serious challenges facing social and economic development in the region as a direct consequence of spreading non-communicable diseases, and which help to inform the Caribbean Cooperation in Health (CCH) programme, are located in the 2005 report of the blue-ribbon Caribbean Commission on Health and Development (CCHD). It was chaired by the first-Caribbean national to have served as Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Sir George Alleyne of Barbados.
The Commission had placed emphasis on the need to treat health care of Caribbean nationals as an investment in the future development of the region and that governments to treat access to health care as moral and human rights obligations.
That concept was to also inform the welcome address by the chairman of COSHOD, Guyana’s Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy when, in his welcome address, he urged all countries of the Caribbean Community to avoid embarking “on a path whereby persons are deprived of health, as it is a moral and human rights issue”  and, therefore, should be preserved as such in the region’s health care system.
If there is indeed a consensus within CARICOM on the way forward for rights-based access to health care, and consistent with implementation of the already unanimously endorsed 2005 ‘Report on Caribbean Commission on Health and Development’ , then the immediate challenge for participating states of the 15-member Community would have an obligation to ensure that cost-free access to generic quality medicines and health care in the public health sector are reflected in what the Community would like to be embraced at  the coming UN meeting
After all, this was the official sentiment expressed at the just-concluded 21st COSHOD Meeting in Guyana with Jamaica being identified for “full support” from CARICOM as one of the sponsors of the impending UN Resolution on combating non-communicable diseases plaguing nations across the globe.
(Courtesy yesterday’s Barbados ‘Daily Nation’)