–to help combat non-communicable diseases

A PILOT one-stop diabetes centre is currently in the works at the Ministry of Health to aid in the fight against non-communicable diseases in Guyana, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, announced on Thursday. “We want to pilot a one-stop centre, where we are going to be looking at diabetes, so that when you come to this centre, every service that relates to diabetes, you’ll be able to get at that one place. “So, whether it’s nutritional counselling, whether it’s seeing a doctor if you have to get outfitted with a shoe, all of that would be done at that one site. And once we see that pilot working, we will replicate that to other areas,” he told participants at a forum dealing specifically with the subject matter at hand.
The occasion was the opening of the Texila American University’s College of Medicine’s third International Conference for Healthcare Professionals and students, which is being held this year under the theme, “Non-Communicable Diseases in the Caribbean Region: Current Scenario and Future Perspectives: Mental Health and Road Traffic Accidents”.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the single largest global health threat responsible for 70 per cent of all deaths worldwide.
Non-communicable diseases are a group of conditions, which, though not passed from person-to-person, are mainly of long duration and progress slowly; they include cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers, chronic lower respiratory diseases, sickle cell disease, mental illness and injuries.
As Dr. Anthony observed, dealing with NCDs has been a challenge to most developing countries, including Guyana, due to the lack of aggressive programmes to identify and treat with them.
“We recognise also that among the non-communicable diseases, endocrine diseases are one of the biggest problems here in Guyana,” Dr. Anthony said, adding: “For example, we’re told by the International Diabetic Federation, that we have close to 60,000 Guyanese who are diabetic; that most of them probably don’t even know that they are diabetic, and that because we don’t have an aggressive programme of being able to identify these persons, many of them would wait for several years before becoming aware.”

He noted that early detection and treatment of these diseases is extremely important, as it would allow for the prevention of the worsening of any disease.
He said that the Health Ministry, in devising a plan to tackle these types of diseases, sought to not just look at the current strategies and programmes, but also worked on enhancing as well as implementing them, so as to best serve the Guyanese people, which is how they were able to come up with the innovative idea of having a one-stop diabetes centre.
Speaking to the mental health aspect of the forum, Minister Anthony noted that there’s a certain stigma attached to the treatment of such issues the world over, which is why his ministry is working to ensure that significant strides are being made to remove it so that any Guyanese in need of this type of service can feel comfortable to access the resources the government has to offer.

“There is a lot of work to do,” Dr. Anthony said, noting: “And I’m really pleased that Texila is leading the way in providing these types of conferences, and a platform for discussion, and that not only do we have these discussions, but we’re able to take these research findings and pull them into our programmes so that we can improve the type of health programmes that we are providing to our population.”
Participants also learnt that efforts are underway to update Guyana’s mental health legislation, whereby a national committee is soon to be set up to formulate a comprehensive piece of legislation that would allow the Health Ministry to address every aspect of mental health in Guyana.