Jamaica spends billions on diabetes

According to diabetes reports, Jamaica spends some $42 billion per annum on treating diabetes and hypertension . An official of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) was reported as saying that the country must concentrate on addressing risk factors relating to this and other diseases.
A variety of key risk factors influence diabetes in the Caribbean. These include obesity, alcohol, tobacco, low levels of fruit and vegetable intake, physical inactivity and unsafe sex.
Dr. Alafia Samuels was reported as commenting: “There is an economic cost to all of this. Diabetes is taking about two per cent of the GDP, high blood pressure is about three per cent, and when you combine the two, five per cent of our GDP is being lost because of high blood pressure and diabetes. That is a lot of money, and we can do better in preventing this. These are the major risk factors for death and disabilities in the regio, and this is where our target needs to be if we seriously want to prevent disease, because treatment is not going to do it for us, we need also to prevent it as well as control it.”