While the increase of non-communicable diseases is a major challenge for Maldives, this issue cannot be addressed without the support of other sectors, states Minister of Health Abdulla Nazim Ibrahim. The Minister made the remakes while speaking on PSM New's current affairs talk show, "Maldives Today".
During the talk show Minister Nazim noted that Male', being an urban and congested setting, has its unique challenges, such as living standards, lifestyle related issues, social behavior and health risks.While urban living continue to offer many opportunities, it also causes lots of challenges for better health, he said.
Citing that communicable diseases have been very manageable due to advancement of medicine and successful vaccination coverage within the country, Minister Nazim said that non-communicable diseases such as heart conditions, obesity, high blood pressure, cancers and hereditary diseases have been on the rise due to our lifestyle changes such as opting for a sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy diet and dangerous habits such as smoking. He said that these challenges require continuous support and collaboration from other sectors.
"Ministry of health have also launched the multi-sectoral non-communicable diseases action plan together with a high-level task force to prevent and control non-communicable diseases. We need to further strengthen partnership, of course, for health within the government with private and voluntary sectors and civil societies obviously. What our overall goal is to create a healthy society, health should start in our homes. Schools, workplace, neighborhood and communities," the Health Minister said.
During the program, Health Minister also highlighted on key findings of the recently released "Maldives National Health Accounts 2014" report.
"Let me highlight some of the key findings of this report. In 2014 Maldives spent, according to this report, more than 4,200 million for the health sector, about two third of which was spent by the government of Maldives. This is a 55% increase in total spending for health when compared to 2011, as I mentioned the first such survey was done in 2011. Interestingly, the spending by government for health is reflective in the commendable health achievements of the Maldives. With very high life expectancy, now our life expectancy is quite same as a developed country, with very low infant and maternal death ratios and control or eliminations of many communicable diseases such as measles, polio, filaria. And many more such achievements. Based on this positive experience and given that government gives high priority to health sector, government will continue, I assure that, to spend on health and improve access to variety of health services in central and other regions," the Minister of health said.
Minister Nazim said that the many revolutionary changes brought to the health sector in the past three years is testimony of the fact that the Government of President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom places health at the heart of the government's developmental agenda.