Epidemic of Non-Communicable Diseases in Jamaica: Monsters Awoken from Lifestyle Practices

Abstract

Of the 57 million deaths that occurred in the world in 2008, 63 percent were due to chronic noncommunicable diseases (CNCDs), and the majority of those who died were women and elderly people. Objectives: To evaluate health indices of those in the retirement aged cohort and working aged cohort; to determine rates of comorbidity for those in the retirement aged and the working aged cohorts; to compute the prevalence rate of specific chronic non-communicable diseases and to calculate death rates for those in retirement aged and the working aged cohorts. Methods: Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions (JSLC) is a national cross-sectional probability survey that is conducted yearly by two governmental agencies in Jamaica. The current sample is 4313 Jamaicans who are either in the working or retirement aged cohorts from 2007 JSLC survey as well as death statistics from 2002 to 2008. Findings: In 2007, the prevalence rate of deaths that occur due to CNCDs is 50.7% (male, 45.2%; female, 59.5%); 12% of those in the working aged population indicate having an illness compared to 43.2% of those in the retirement aged cohort; 23.7% of retirement aged cohorts reported having diabetes compared to 15% of those in the working aged cohort, and those in the retirement aged cohort imply having hypertension 1.6 times more than those in the working aged cohort. The rate of comorbidity is 20.6% (retirement aged cohort, 27.4%; working aged cohort, 15.6%). The prevalence rate of those with CNCDs is 37.6% for those in the retirement aged cohort and 8.2% for those in the working aged cohort. Conclusion: It is imperative that age, gender, area of residence specific and culturally relevant policies be developed in order

Unspecified Non-communicable Diseases in Jamaica: Has the Time Come to Unravel this Label?

“…The issue of ignorance of NCDs, in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean region, will erode the efforts of heads of governments in the region to address the matters declared at the 2007 Summit in Trinidad and Tobago on how to address the increasing incidence and prevalence of NCDs in the Region [16]. Bourne et al's work [6] is the rationale for this study and not having adequate information about the population with NCDs and its burden to the society is justification of examining the situation urgently. While this study is unable to provide a detailed description as to what constitute unspecified chronic conditions, it unearth information as to who, what, health indices, comorbidity and social determinants for this cohort of people.…”

“…The NCDs epidemic in Jamaica, and by extension the wider low-tomiddle income nations, are even more intensified as Bourne et al's work [6], which revealed that hypertension and diabetes for the population of Jamaica (>0 years old) are greater than of the population 15-74 years old, 33.3 percent and 19.9 percent respectively. The prevalence of hypertension and diabetes in Jamaica are greater than that, which is reported in the British Virgin Islands (i.e., Eastern Caribbean Islands); hypertension, 16.6 percent and diabetes, 10.0 percent [12].…”

“…A study by Bourne et al, which used data from the survey, found that the majority of respondents who reported NCDs are in the unspecified conditions category (37.8 percent) [6]. The prevalence rate in the unspecified NCDs categorization outweighs the classified ones such as hypertension (33.3 percent); diabetes (19.9 percent) and arthritis (9.0 percent) and this speaks to the lack of information that for decades marks how the planning process is fashioned and executed in Jamaica.…”

“…However, national data are only collected and published on diabetes, hypertension, arthritis and unspecified chronic conditions. With Bourne et al's work is showing that the unspecified NCDs constitute most of the self-reported diagnosed health conditions in Jamaica [6], many questions arise therefore, which are left unanswered by this categorization. While the classification by Wilks et al work expand on that of the JSLC to include diabetes, hypertension, pre-hypertension, high cholesterol, depression, nutritional status and sickle cell disease [11]; there is still a gap in the literature and the unspecified categorization does not aid planning, but is rather is hindered by it.…”

“…This demonstrates the health challenge of governments, public health specialists, health care practitioners and other people to address the matter of NCDs. Jamaica, a country in the English-speaking Caribbean region, experienced an increase in NCDs and there is also a change in the identity of those that are faced with these conditions over the last ten years [6][7][8][9][10][11]. This reality is captured in a study conducted by Bourne et al [7] that the rate of NCDs in Jamaica increased from 8 per 1,000 in 2002 to 56 per 1,000 in 2007.…”