JAMAICANS are being encouraged to engage in greater levels of physical activity to reduce their risk of developing lifestyle illnesses, such as hypertension and diabetes.

The call has come from Minister of Health Dr Christopher Tufton, who said this is in keeping with the Government’s drive to lessen the prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the country.

“I’d like to tell Jamaicans, where you don’t have to drive, walk… we are going to wrap that around a programme and make it into a national drive, because I believe truly that we can cut down on those ailments (NCDs) by doing some of that (walking),” he said.

He was speaking at the launch of a landscaping business and commissioning of residential mailboxes in the St John’s Heights community in St Catherine on Sunday.

NCDs, which are also referred to as chronic or lifestyle diseases, are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in Jamaica, accounting for over 70 per cent of preventable premature deaths. The most prevalent are hypertension, diabetes, and asthma.

Unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption are major risk factors.

Lamenting that health care in Jamaica is “extremely expensive”, especially to treat illnesses that could otherwise have been prevented, Dr Tufton said the ministry will seek to prevent the onset of ailments rather than trying to treat them after they occur, which is where the expense is borne.

“From a health policy perspective… I would like to… take to the community a message of prevention because it is in prevention that we are going to secure our health and the health of our community. In cure, what you are going to find is a greater probability that you can’t (do so)… and so prevention is where it ought to be,” he said.

According to a 2012 World Bank fact sheet on NCDs in Jamaica, these illnesses have a large direct and indirect economic burden for Jamaicans.

The fact sheet states that an average individual suffering from NCDs spends approximately one third of household income (J$55,503) on health care services and medicine purchases.

“Direct health care costs associated with NCDs impose a greater burden on poor households than better-off households. National aggregate out-of-pocket health expenditures amount to J$33,813 million (US$452 million) or three per cent of Jamaica’s gross domestic product,” the document states.