Opposition spokesman on health and wellness Dr Alfred Dawes has accused the Government of placing too much emphasis on “spectacle” rather than long-term strategy, warning that Jamaica’s worsening obesity, diabetes, and hypertension crises continue to outpace the country’s public health response.

Contributing to the sectoral debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Dawes argued that the Government had become overly focused on highly publicised projects and announcements while failing to tackle the deeper social and economic drivers behind non-communicable diseases, commonly known as NCDs.

“Tactical success does not equal strategic success. Winning battles does not mean you have won the war, and a Government that makes mistakes, made up targets for real outcomes, that replaces strategy with spectacle, is a Government that has lost its way, however many press releases it generates,” Dawes said.

He argued that despite years of public campaigns encouraging exercise and healthy living, Jamaica’s obesity crisis continues to deepen because the country has failed to seriously address unhealthy diets and food affordability.

“The health of our people is determined long before they present to a doctor. Obesity, our greatest challenge today, will not be solved by how Jamaica moves, obesity will be solved by how Jamaica eats. Our food industry is killing us slowly, profitably and with the implicit blessing of a Government that cannot speak of healthy eating while the prime minister cuts ribbons at fast-food restaurant openings and calls it prosperity,” he said.

“That contradiction is not merely ironic, it is deadly. The true culprit in Jamaica’s non-communicable disease epidemic is glucose, the sustained elevation of blood glucose that produces insulin resistance, the engine that drives obesity, type two diabetes, kidney failure, amputations, and early deaths,” he added.

He further argued that healthier diets had effectively become a luxury in Jamaica, particularly for lower-income families.

“Unfortunately, the most popular protein source in Jamaica is chicken back, the lowest protein, highest fat content of all chicken parts, not by choice, [but] by poverty. Import duties of 240 per cent on healthier chicken parts have taxed nutrition out of the reach of those who most need it,” Dawes told Parliament.

He warned that Jamaica’s public health crisis could not be solved solely through the Ministry of Health, insisting that other ministries play critical roles in shaping national health outcomes.

“When a grandmother cannot afford the taxi fare to keep her clinic appointment to keep her high blood pressure under control, that, too, is a health crisis and the minister responsible for transport must answer. When a family cannot afford vegetables and subsist on chicken back and rice and peas that, too, is a health crisis and the minister of agriculture must answer, and when the rats and roaches run amok in uncollected garbage piling up in our communities, that too, is a health crisis and the minister of local government must answer,” he said.

Dawes maintained that Jamaica needed to move beyond simply treating illness and instead focus on building a healthier society through preventative care, nutrition and broader social reform.