Transcript
NANDI GLASSIE: Right at the outset to look at the health of the mothers, to make sure they stick to the fundamentals, eating the right foods, doing exercise, so very fundamental stuff. It all starts from the mother and the other thing in terms of child obesity, as children are borne we should introduce them into becoming more active. So there is a huge education programme being presented by our Public Health for our mothers to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables,, you know to increase their level of vitaman intake rather than the carbo stuff.
DON WISEMAN: This is just reflective of the huge and growwing problem that the region has with non-communicable diseases. Effort has been going into to try to combat these problems for a long time but a lot more effort needs to go in because the figures keep getting worse, don't they?
NG: Yes that's correct and it is getting worse at an alarming rate. A very important part of our discussions 'How do we combat the non-communicable diseases, particularly with a change of lifestyle, taking in a lot of suugary food, sweet stuff and process food. So we are really saying that there should be a movement for people going back to eating our natural food, less processed food,, more exercise, don't smoke, control your drinking. All those basic elements we keep on reminding them through a mass media programme, even through to the isolated islands we need to retain that. So in the area of smoking we introduced increased levies on imported to the Cook Islands for a period of time. We also encouraged the schools never to sell any more fizzy drinks and to encourage them[ the students] to drink plain water. And for people to concentrate more on doing their home gardening. Little steps. It is not something we can overcome overnight, and each family, each person will have to do the best so that they can eat natural food, so that they can be more active on a regular basis. And we also start to put a ban on smoking - on some of the islands they should be smoke free by the year 2020. We could be a bit ambitious but most of us are aligning with New Zealand to try and ban smoking by the year 2025. We are expecting people to be seriouss about combatting the high level of diabetes and high blood pressure and cancer and kidney probleems here in the Pacific.
DW: While that is happening though there are a number of Pacific countries that are either in the process of talking to tobacco companies about setting up operations in their countries, I know this is happening in Solomon Islands, it is being contemplated in Samoa, so it seems often that the health ministers are not getting the support of the trade ministers and the agriculture ministers and the sports ministers and the education ministers...
NG: That's correct. In some countries they have been quiet about smoking because I think they have established smoking factories in some of the larger countries. In smaller countries I think it is working well for us. So there appears some sort of push and pull between the health ministries and of course the trade area in some countries. We have also raised that it is not an easy solution, but in our particular case we have tried to ban. What happened in the Cook Islands context when we started increasing the level of costs of cigarettes here, there was a significant drop in the level of smoking particularly among the young smokers. Although that's working you never know Don because if you start putting a ban on something other things start cropping up.
DW: There was criticism at the meeting that countries like Australia and New Zealand didn't send their health ministers, that just a functionary of ministry of foreign affairs was put in place there, but that is not appropriate in your view?
NG: It is not appropriate because when we start talking about issues of health, we need the views of the minister or his deputy from New Zealand and Australia. Now having foreign affairs officials to represent may not carry the same impetus as the ministers here in the Pacific are concerned. They would rather talk to the ministers or someone from the ministry, rather than someone from other ministries, other than health."
