A high-level technical meeting of United Nations health authorities on these diseases and mental health, held in Barbados, also learned that the rate of hypertension exceeds 30 percent in almost all of these countries.
The nomination debates focus on progress, challenges and opportunities to scale up multisectoral responses to noncommunicable diseases and mental health, and make recommendations to scale up responses that save and improve lives.
According to the WHO and PAHO, 10 of the countries with the highest obesity rates in the world are small island nations, which also have the world’s highest prevalence of adult diabetes, while rates of mental health disorders reach 15 percent in the Caribbean and Pacific.
The climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with poverty, unemployment, inequality and the marginalization of minority communities, are fueling a rise in noncommunicable diseases and mental disorders, WHO CEO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
These small nations are disproportionately exposed to the physical and mental health impacts of the climate crisis, hence the high prevalence of NCD risk factors such as tobacco use, low physical activity, unhealthy diets and obesity, he warned.
Added to this, he specified, was the poor integration with primary health care and universal health care, which left vulnerable populations severely ill with Covid-19 and health systems already overwhelmed.
At the meeting, Minister for Health and Welfare of Barbados, Jerome Walcott, urged a critical review of initiatives addressing NCDs that have the potential to positively impact and improve the health and well-being of citizens of small island nations.
Walcott noted that these countries have made important recommendations to step up action on NCDs and mental health to meet the goal of reducing premature mortality by a third and reducing suicide rates by 2030.
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