Professor Kei Sato, leader of the final evaluation team of the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA), listens to Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health (MOH), Grace Allen-Young (right) at the JICA/MOH/Planning Institute of Jamaica signing ceremony at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer THE JAPANESE Govern-ment has been working with the Ministry of Health and Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), since 1998, to get persons in the island's southern region to adopt healthy lifestyle practises in order to prevent lifestyle-related diseases.
Some $12 million has already been invested and Japanese experts have been on the island doing the final evaluation of the project, which will end next May, to determine its viability.
So far, Ministry of Health and PIOJ officials have deemed it a godsend and hope to extend the project to other parts of the island.
The aim of the project is to provide preventative health care through public health education and health care promotion. The main target groups are people with chronic lifestyle diseases like diabetes, hypertension, heart diseases and strokes. There are free blood pressure, weight and height checks and the prevention approach is to inform all persons about maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
A clinic has already been started in Manchester and extended to the parishes of St. Elizabeth and Clarendon.
Leila Palmer, director of the external co-operation management unit of the PIOJ, said that the mobile clinics have been reaching people in very remote areas who might not have been helped otherwise.
"They are now more aware of the lifestyle changes needed to prevent the risk of diseases," she said at the signing of the final evaluation of the project. She said that the evaluation has shown that effective delivery has been attained and they will work to strengthen weak areas and target other groups like the youth.
Reports have shown that there have been thousands of visits to the mobile clinics, and return visits have also been encouraging.
Since the initial inception, the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) has dispatched several experts to Jamaica, specifically to the southern region. The experts have provided two mobile clinics and an array of medical supplies and equipment. Additionally they have assisted 18 Jamaicans to receive training in health related fields in Japan.
The project 'Strengthening of Health Care in the Southern Region' addresses issues like a high trend of diabetes cases in youth, that technical director at the Southern Regional Health Authority (SERHA), Dr. Michael Coombs said last year was a cause for concern.
He said at a handing over ceremony of equipment by JICA to the SERHA last June, that while diabetes is found mostly among persons age 40-59, they have been noticing an increasing trend among youths, and that the increase in diabetic cases may very well be related to their lifestyle.
Another growing problem is obesity, especially among women, where a SERHA study showed that 50 per cent of persons found to be overweight considered themselves to be all right. Excess weight and obesity can lead to chronic lifestyle diseases, including hypertension.
The challenges are being addressed by the JICA/Jamaica wellness programme.
