It’s Time to Act on NCDs, Time to Act on Childhood Obesity
The NCD Alliance’s annual Global Week for Action on NCDs campaign takes place this week, 7 – 13 September 2020.
The Coronavirus pandemic has revealed the collective failure of our governments to address chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and obesity. The disproportionate vulnerability of people living with NCDs and obesity to COVID-19 has left huge portions of our populations susceptible to severe disease and mortality.
The HCC and our partners have been calling on CARICOM to prioritise childhood prevention policies since 2017, but now more than ever, COVID-19 has shown us that the Time to Act on NCDs and Childhood Obesity is now. Childhood obesity is an emerging crisis globally and in the Caribbean where 1 in 3 children are overweight or obese. These staggering numbers threaten to undermine the health of entire generations if bold policy and legislative actions are not taken now to create environments supportive of healthier, happier children and adolescents.
Children have a right to access healthy nutritious food and Caribbean Governments have committed to policies to tackle childhood obesity. We applaud efforts made thus far but we are calling on our CARICOM Heads of Government and State to fulfil their commitments – Now is the time to Act on NCDs!
At various high-level meetings, CARICOM Governments:
- Pledged to address advertising of potentially harmful foods & elevating taxes on sugar, salt and transfats (2016)
- Highlighted the grave concern of obesity in primary and secondary school children (2017)
- Endorsed UN High Level NCDs priorities including front of package labelling (2018)
In 2019, HCC issued an Call to Urgent Action to implement 3 priority nutrition policies. Almost one year later and our asks remain the same. Much more work needs to be done and we are calling on CARICOM Political Leadership again to implement key nutrition policies:
Below are our supporting visuals for you to use for social media and more:
#ActOnNCDs #healthycaribbean #beatchildhoodobesity
Download the full package of visuals: Facebook and Instagram
We are calling on our CARICOM Heads of Government to fulfil their commitments, now is the time to act on NCDs! (Click/tap to enlarge the images)
Download the full package of visuals here.
Time to Act on NCDs – CSO’s Speak Out
Click/tap to enlarge the quotes below.
