BASSETERRE, St.Kitts-Nevis (Friday 10th July 2020)- New minister of Health Akilah Byron-Nisbett and resident Taiwanese Ambassador Tom Lee on Tuesday 7th July 2020 affixed their signatures to documents geared towards a Capacity Building Project for the Prevention and Control of Chronic Metabolic Disease.

The signing ceremony was held at the Ministry of Health located at Bladen Commercial Development in St.Kitts, marking the start of the new project expected to span a period of four years.

Taiwan ICDF Manager Mr. Feng-Da Tsai said the project “aims at tackling health issues that are seriously affecting the people of St.Kitts and Nevis and further the health assistance of the Federation.”

Such health issues, he said, include diabetes, hypertension and chronic kidney disease.

Ambassador Lee said the Taiwan Embassy will continue to work with Taiwan ICDF and Taipei’s Veterans General Hospital and the Ministry of Health in St.Kitts and Nevis to implement the project.

“We all know that major causes of death in St.Kitts-Nevis are chronic diseases and as a true friend and ally of St.Kitts and Nevis, Taiwan of course cares our friend’s health and want to help them improve their health and stay healthy. That’s why four years ago, our Embassy with the Ministry of health started the previous project which ended three months ago,” he commented.

He said the objective of this project is to help the government of St.Kitts and Nevis strengthen its prevention and control systems for chronic diseases noting that his government is the sole sponsor for the project while the St.Kitts-Nevis government also contributes some of the funding.

New Minister of Health Akilah Byron-Nisbett spoke about the high percentage of death in St.Kitts-Nevis regarding chronic diseases which needs to get under control.

“We have been hearing time and time again of that very high percentage 83% of our mortality rate is due to chronic diseases, and that is something that we need to get under control in St.Kitts and Nevis. It is a burden on our health system and it is something that we keep talking about as being important in order for us to be able to find ways for us to prevent and control some of the illnesses and death associated with it.”

She also talked about the recently ended project which dealt with kidney diseases in particular.

“In that project, it was found that the main cause of some of these disease are through metabolic diseases and so now this project is going to get at the root of those problems and how can we build capacity, how can we build persons’ awareness of control of these different diseases. It’s a way of controlling our obesity rates, it’s a way of controlling our hypertension rates and controlling our cardiovascular disease rates and so this is timely and necessary and as we continue to speak about controlling our NCDs (Non-Communicable Diseases), this comes at a time where that’s going to be important for us to be able to meet these objectives.”