Against the backdrop of increasing debate in the region over considerations that include a continually rising food import bill and increased health-related challenges arising out of what is believed to be unhealthy dietary choices, the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) has used World Food Day, October 16, to seek to focus the attention of the region on the importance of infusing food-related issues more pointedly into regional public policy contemplations.
CARPHA says that it is advocating for topics on “food security, sustainability, and nutrition” to become a more prominent part of both public policy and public discourse in the region. The regional body is also seeking more pointed focus on the role of “multiple stakeholders working to provide safe, healthy, affordable, nutritious food, for all.”
Citing this year’s World Food Day theme, ‘Our Actions are Our Future,’ CARPHA says in its statement that its focus this year will be on strengthening local food systems for host communities and displaced communities.
Globally, it noted that an estimated 2.37 billion people – 30% of the world’s population – lacked access to adequate food in 2020, a figure that represents an increase of 320 million persons being classified in just one year.
While the English-speaking Caribbean faces no imminent acute food security crisis, the delinquency of the region in relation to its food security continues to be reflected in what is widely felt to be an indifference among governments in the region in the matter of planning and executing a coherent regional food security policy whilst, simultaneously paying more focused attention to the inexorable rise in the region’s food import bill now believed to be in the region of US$5 billion annually.
CARPHA says in its release that the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has cast a new shroud of uncertainty on food security in the region, having left an estimated 2.7 million “food insecure” people in the region. The Agency also points to a CARICOM survey which reported that 71% of respondents reported higher than usual food prices and that “low-income households and refugees and migrants are some of the most vulnerable groups to food insecurities.”
Not least among CARPHA’s concerns, the statement says, is the fact that “key public health threats to the food and agriculture sector in the Caribbean include foodborne and waterborne disease outbreaks, weather uncertainties, flooding, and other natural disasters… and now, the COVID-19 pandemic. CARPHA cites the pronouncement by Dr Lisa Indar, the Agency’s Director, Surveillance, Disease Prevention and Control, that the advent of COVID-19 has meant that more persons in the region now face “limitations, and in some cases are struggling to meet their food and nutritional needs which decreases their options for healthy food choices.”
CARPHA notes too, that not least among the food security concerns in the region that “people have transitioned their food choices in recent years to diets higher in unsaturated fats, oils, sweeteners, salts and those lower in nutrients,” a circumstance that has given rise to an increase in “conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, cancer and asthma,” which diseases, it says are often associated with consuming poor nutritional options.
Significantly, CARPHA notes that persons living with these conditions are at higher risk of hospital admission and complications from COVID-19 infection and even death from the virus.
As if the seeming indifference in the region to adopting policies that will enhance its food security prospects, going forward, is not enough, CARPHA says that the Caribbean now faces the ominous threat of climate as a further threat to its food security prospects. It notes that changes in environmental temperatures have affected crop yield and the health of livestock and poultry and that these, in turn, disrupt food production and availability. “During and after disasters, persons are at higher risk of contracting foodborne illnesses from contaminated foods. Persons who are relocated to national shelters may not always have access to their specific diets and nutritional requirements,” the Agency adds.
CARPHA notes that while, in recent years, the region has made significant progress in addressing undernourishment and responding to food insecurity and food safety concerns, obesity has now become the leading public health and development issue.
