Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 8, 2020 (SKNIS): A signing ceremony for the implementation arrangement of a capacity building project for the prevention and control of chronic metabolic disease was held at the Ministry of Health Conference Room on July 7.
This project is as a result of St. Kitts and Nevis’ Government and Taiwan’s Technical Mission in the Federation collaborating to strengthen the chronic disease prevention and control system.
In speaking at the ceremony, Ambassador of the Republic of China (Taiwan), His Excellency Tom Lee stated that “The major causes of death in St. Kitts and Nevis are chronic diseases.”
Minister of Health, the Honourable Akilah Byron, explained that an initial project which was implemented on April 1, 2017, focused on kidney diseases. She continued to explain that this project discovered that the main causes of these diseases were found through metabolic diseases.
Honourable Byron stated that, “This project is going to get at the root of those problems, how we can build capacity, and how we can build persons’ awareness of and control of these different diseases.”
Minister Byron said that “this is timely and necessary and as we continue to speak about controlling our NCDs. This comes at a time where it is going to be important for us to be able to meet these objectives.”