Deyalsingh: Take better care of your health now

“We rush to treat, but there is very little emphasis on preventative care,” Deyalsingh said.

Speaking yesterday at the formal opening of the Women’s Outpatient Clinics and Colposcopy Centre at Mt Hope, Deyalsingh said while there were roles to provide health care for citizens, whether it was cardiovascular, cancers, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), the role of the ministry is to strive to get from treatment to prevention.

He said a key component to achieving this was getting the data. To this end, Deyalsingh said money has been allocated to have, not just the cancer registry up and running, but all other diseases including NCDs.

“We do not have a functional cancer registry. There is no data so we do not know how many patients we have with cancer – cervical, prostate, breast, lung – so how does Nipdec (National Insurance Property Development Company Ltd) determine how much drugs to buy? How do you forecast for drugs? For the first time, money has been allocated to bring the cancer registry up to date on software and we would have data on all other diseases,” he said.

Deyalsingh said they were unable to get a true handle on how many people were ill and with what because there was no data.

He said the $8 billion that was announced as allocated to treat NCDs did not mean that the money was just used for drugs to treat the diseases, but all direct costs provided including hospital beds, physicians, nurses and other needs.

However, he said the real cost went to loss of productivity when people had to take hours off from work to take their loved ones to clinic.

Deyalsingh said too many patients are faced with overwhelming amounts of information on diabetes, cancers and smoking and yet they still continue to not heed the messages.

He said doctors were seeing younger patients with diabetes each year because people were becoming sedentary and need to be more active, watch what they ate and monitor their sugar intake.

“I am going to be maligned for saying this, but sugar should be classified as a poison. The way we are currently using it is not good for us.” Deyalsingh said the centre would be used as a hub for NCDs and also testing for Zika - the mosquito- borne disease from the Aedes Egypti mosquito - in pregnant women.

The centre, on which construction began in 2012 and cost $79.3 million, began treating patients in December 2016.

It offers pap smears and colposcopy services, neonatology, maternal health, obstetrics and gynaecology.