Leaders take easy way out on health issues
Jump to full article: Islands Business International (nz), 2008-03-20
Author: Lisa Williams-Lahari
Intro: Yes, there are a lot of sick people in this part of the world, many of them ticking time bombs of preventable ill-health who reached this point through a lifetime of cumulative choices.
For those Pacific Islanders who have smoked their way to illness, often on a ride of a pack a day, hospital resources, trained doctors, specialist care, even basic bedding and space are already stretched with those who got there first through overeating, binge-drinking and too little exercise.
It's estimated that three out of every four deaths in the Pacific can be linked to non-communicable, lifestyle diseases.
Unlike death by accident or injury, dying from a lifestyle disease is ironically the most likely way Pacific Islanders will leave this world--and the most preventable. . . .
The Pacific scenario above is becoming an all too common one for islands governments whose health budgets could do with financial injections and more skilled nationals willing to return home from expensive overseas training--and remain there.
Also worrying is the impact on women, making up around half of those affected by lifestyle ills, but still carrying the caregiver and domestic-nurse work when other family members fall sick. Take them out of the equation due to their own ill-health and the impact is a double hit to islands homes. . . .
The stop-smoking lobby has two items in its basket of solutions which other lifestyle diseases don't have. One is an international anti-smoking treaty, known in development jargon as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, or FCTC. The other is a senator from Palau by the name of Caleb Otto.
. . .
And despite his cynicism over corrupt colleagues, Otto believes it is still Pacific leadership that will push action towards the vision of a smoke-free Pacific.
He's not far off the mark. A new post-Pacific Forum Leaders statement on Health delivered in Tonga called for "immediate action to halt and reverse NCDs...through multi-sectoral engagement".
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