(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Regional and International partners who attended the unprecedented CARICOM Heads of Government Summit on Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) on Saturday, September 15, committed their support to CARICOM in its onslaught against NCDs.

The One-day Summit came to a close with a raft of recommendations including policy actions, fiscal and regulatory measures to stem the tide of NCDs, which are now considered the leading cause of death in the Caribbean.

One of the major outputs of the Summit was a Declaration titled: Uniting in Stemming the Tide of NCDs. The declaration affirmed, among other things, the Community’s full support for the initiatives and mechanisms aimed at strengthening regional health institutions; immediate pursuance of a legislative agenda for passage of the legal provisions related to the International Framework Convention on Tobacco Control; development of public education programme on lifestyle management.

Speaking at the Summit, Dr. Mirta Roses Periago, Director of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) pledged the organisation's commitment to providing training and capacity building for Member States and regional health institutions to monitor the epidemic and the risk factors as well as to plan appropriate responses using internationally recognized tools and instruments.

PAHO - one of the facilitators of the Summit - will also assist with the preparation of a revised Caribbean regional plan for NCD prevention and will mobilize resources and partners to aid the fight jointly with the CARICOM Secretariat. In that regard Dr. Periago, said PAHO would work with the Secretariat in convening a meeting in 2008 of donors and partners.

In addition, the health organization will convene, within a year, an interdisciplinary group to evaluate the Summit’s impact as part of the monitoring, evaluation and follow up processes.

In her intervention, Dr Catherine Le Gales-Camus, Assistant Director General, World Health Organisation (WHO) said her organization would include the Caribbean in an impending Global Plan of Action for the prevention and control of chronic diseases. The plan of action, she said would be presented in January 2008 to the WHO’s Executive Board.

“What we are witnessing today is how the Caribbean is bringing stewardship to the rest of the world,” she affirmed.

Dr Le Gales-Camus lauded CARICOM for making what she described as “unprecedented momentum” and “tremendous progress,” remarking that “your (The Caribbean’s) efforts are lessons in how to stretch resources so that benefits reach the largest possible number of people.”

According to the WHO Assistant Director General, those lessons needed to be shared with other regions. “This region knows what chronic diseases mean, when to sound the alarm and, most importantly, what to do, placing health promotion and prevention at the fore,” she declared.

Professor Henry Fraser of the University of the West Indies (UWI) said the University through its medical and research faculties would continue to provide Governments with evidence-based research to enable them to formulate appropriate policies necessary to curtail NCDs and recommended that Member States include a line item – research - in their health budget.

Contact: piu@caricom.org