THE cost of health care will increase significantly if the incidence of non-communicable diseases continues to rise.
That is the view of Member of Parliament and Minister of Health, John Boyce. Speaking in the House of Assembly yesterday, he said his Ministry sees it as critical in its health plan, to focus on the prevention of non-communicable diseases. His comments came as he referred to the National Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases Commission, which he said was set up lead the fight against those diseases.
“It’s no point waiting until one has contracted these diseases to say let us now deal with it, because as I said that it is a cost which we cannot contemplate for our country. And as we continue to move in a world where the view is that health care should be available to all persons, the reality is that this has become even more urgent and therefore the work in terms of looking at the entire diet, as to what we eat; the question of smoking because, there is no question that it has been clearly demonstrated that smoking of tobacco has increased the onset of lung cancer; alcohol abuse, the whole question of alcohol abuse again and the repercussions of hypertension, diabetes in our older years is something which we must be fully aware of,” he said.
Minister Boyce said that through the work of the Commission, which has been carried out sometimes in conjunction with the private sector, must be commended. He said that if efforts are not made to maintain the programmes to raise awareness about non-communicable diseases and intensify efforts where necessary, we could be faced with a health cost of the future which would be unbearable.“We already have an expansive debate taking place in terms of the cost of providing health care in Barbados, and the Ministry of Finance is constantly having to grapple with the demand of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the other institutions which I have mentioned. So that one of the strategies that we have employed in this regard, is to try to emphasise the benefit of, as I said prevention, and indeed the benefit of treatment of our population at the primary stages of the onset of any of these diseases and I speak specifically to our polyclinic institutions,” he said.
With that in mind, he said that they will continue to expand the services at the polyclinics and to embrace greater technology, through the implementation of a health information system. He said that there is need to make the information that is collected in the databases at the polyclinics, immediately accessible under proper security, to those who may have to make decisions regarding care of patients in other public or private health care facilities. Minister Boyce was referring to a proposed health card to be made available to Barbadians, which would allow medical professionals immediately access to patients’ health history. This step, he said, would bring about a more effective and efficient way of diagnosing health problems, as well as treating them.
“My call is for the Ministry of Health, the officers within the Ministry, to lead this charge in making sure that this health information system is taken on board and that the health card would allow immediate access to specific data about the patient from time to time,” he said. (JRT)
