Tufton wants advocates to fight against NCDs
Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton is calling on Jamaicans to become activists in the fight against non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that are brought on by poor lifestyle choices.
Speaking at the launch of the Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC) sermon series at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel, Tufton said that although the Government is taking action around issues such as industrial trans-fats, “we need advocates for this worthy cause”.
“We need people who can influence to say to those who look to them for leadership [that they should] … seek out what they consume and be satisfied that [it] is, in fact, good for them,” he declared.
Tufton said 90 per cent of persons who died after contracting COVID-19 were also found to have an underlying condition like hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer.
He said the benefits of lifestyle change, including diet and exercise, is therefore a crucial message that needs to be continuously spread among Jamaicans in a wide-scale manner.
“I want to see activists. We need it to be preached from the pulpit or from the football field and in the Parliament, and by everybody,” the minister said.
The JCC sermon series is a public awareness programme that will be promoting healthy eating and lifestyle choices among the Jamaican faith-based community by utilising data from research, fact sheets, videos and Bible studies. The initiative is in collaboration with the just-concluded Food and Nutrition Caribbean project, which, over a four-year period, has seen a number of successes in its goal of investigating and influencing national food systems in Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and St Kitts and Nevis.