BARBADIANS SUFFERING 49 STROKES A MONTH

By Caribbean Medical News Staff

In a shocking announcement made at the Queen Elizabeth’s Public Accountability meeting, noted Barbadian cardiologist Dr. Anthony Harris has said that Barbadians are suffering forty-nine strokes in a month.  Dr.  Harris indicated that some of these were often fatal.

“In truth, it is perhaps even more prevalent in our population than heart attacks. We have 11 heart attacks occurring while we had something like 49 strokes a month, and the effect of a stroke is it can kill you or leave you severely disabled. Of course, some will recover but a lot of people, even when they get a stroke and do not die, wish they had died because of the debilitating effects,” Harris stated.

He said this number has increased from about three years ago and continued that each month there were almost one dozen heart-related cases. Barbados recently lost one of its top brass in the police force when Anderson “Invader” Bowen passed away of heart related illness a few weeks ago. Another 45 year old officer of the Royal Barbados Police Force died suddenly at the QEH just days ago.

Describing the information as “alarming”, Dr. Harris said that strokes were more prevalent and treated as the “ignored step-child of cardiovascular diseases”.

The information was shared with an interactive audience at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.

He added that strokes were more prevalent among the elderly population, with half of the victims being diabetics while indicating that like many other countries in the Caribbean, Barbados was suffering from a high rate of NCD or Non-Communicable Chronic Diabetes.

Barbados still has the dubious distinction of being the “amputation capital of the world”, a term denounced and rebuked by the former Minister of Health, the Hon. Donville Inniss. Nonetheless, Barbados continues to suffer alarming rates of, diabetes, obesity even among teenagers, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

The Ministry of Health has been appealing to Barbadians to make alterations in lifestyle including change of diet, exercise and a reduction of stress.

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