By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas’ hemisphere-worst status on adult obesity threatens to “bankrupt this nation” and “wipe out its economy” unless the country “gets a grip”, a former health minister warned yesterday.

Dr Duane Sands, now the Free National Movement’s (FNM) chairman, told Tribune Business that while “the siren was sounded many years ago” The Bahamas has simply failed to tackle its non-communicable diseases (NCD) crisis after a report released yesterday by the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reaffirmed close to 50 percent of the country’s adult population is obese.

The report, which also received input from the likes of the World Food Programme and World Health Organisation, revealed that the percentage of adults deemed obese in The Bahamas is around three times’ higher than the global average at 15.8 percent and also at least 15 percentage points higher than the Latin America and Caribbean regional average of 29.9 percent.

“In the Caribbean, more than 45 percent of the adult population of The Bahamas and of Saint Kitts and Nevis was affected by obesity in 2022,” the FAO report revealed. “In Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, around one-third of the population was affected by obesity. On the contrary, the country with the lowest prevalence in this sub-region was Haiti [at] 10.7 percent.”

An accompanying bar chart appeared to place The Bahamas as the Western Hemisphere leader on adult obesity - an unwanted status - with between 45 percent to 50 percent of the population found to be overweight based on their body mass index (BMI).

Dr Sands, noting that the FAO report’ findings align with The Bahamas’ own research, said too many are dying early and, as a result, not only are they and their family members robbed through lives ending too soon but the economy also loses out on their productive years.

And, besides the extra strain and cost imposed on the public and private healthcare systems in coping with conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and kidney failure, he added that obesity and related illnesses also undermine worker productivity and output.

“We have recognised this massive threat to our economy from as early as 2007 at the first-ever world conference on NCDs,” Dr Sands told Tribune Business. “At that meeting it was predicted that countries of CARICOM and the Caribbean, if we did not get control of these NCDs within the next 30 years, that they would wipe out the economies of the region and that is what is happening.

“The Bahamas, unfortunately, suffers from perhaps the worst constellation of NCDs; worse than any other country in the region and yes, sadly, we are the most obese country and overweight country of them all - not quite in the world, but the region and likely the Americas.

“The impact they have on the economy, healthcare system and our ability to deal with the complications are a slippery slope that speaks to the need for food security; healthy foods that prevent us from continuing this downward spiral.”

While there has been much talk about using tax policy to incentivise Bahamians to eat healthier foods by removing VAT entirely from such items, successive administrations have failed to take such actions. The Minnis administration, of which Dr Sands was part for its initial years, merely eliminated VAT on the existing ‘breadbasket’ item list regardless of whether such foods were healthy.

And the Davis administration, in seeking to ease the cost of living crisis, recently slashed the VAT on most food items by 50 percent to 5 percent while also ignoring their health value. Dr Sands yesterday argued that The Bahamas must now become “very intentional” in ensuring its citizens have access to fruits and vegetables, eat more white meats than red, and move away from those foods “we consume far too much of”.

He added: “The fact we import 90 percent of our food puts us horrendously at risk and is a matter - and I believe I am not exaggerating - of national security. When you look at the vulnerability of The Bahamas, many people think food security does not rise to the top, but we are what we eat... This conversation is critically important for the way forward, and ought to have more attention in our policy-making than it does.

“People may be able to afford food, but they cannot afford to eat healthy; they eat what they can. People are eating food stuffs that are not necessarily good for them. The siren was sounded many years ago, almost 20 years ago. Sadly, we have not made the level of progress we ought to have made or hoped to have made in that intervening period.

“We are paying the price for it as a country. We are watching parents, sisters and brothers drop down like flies with strokes, heart failure, kidney failure, and unless we get a grip on this it will bankrupt the nation.” Dr Sands added that the FAO report findings matched those from the 2019 Bahamas STEPS survey, which asserted that too many Bahamians were “dying too young” from NCDs.

While NCDs were found responsible for 74 percent of all deaths, the STEPS data also noted that 38 percent of NCD-related deaths involved persons aged between 30 and 70 years-old and were thus “premature”. And a Bahamian’s chances of dying young were rated at 14 percent, or almost one in seven.

“NCDs place significant strain on our social networks, health systems and health dollar, compromising work productivity and quality of life,” the STEPS survey warned. “Most telling is the reality that NCDs contribute 12 percent of total productive years of life lost in the country.”

Meanwhile, The Bahamas appeared to fare better in in another section of the FAO report where it was ranked among the lease food insecure nations in the Caribbean. However, the data still indicated that, between 2021 and 2023, close to one in five Bahamians suffered “moderate or severe constraints” on their ability to access sufficient food.

“The countries with the lowest prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity were The Bahamas and Grenada, estimated at 17.2 and 19.9 percent, respectively,” the FAO report said. However, Dr Sands said this indicator was potentially misleading because of The Bahamas’ vulnerability to external shocks such as hurricanes, the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recessions.

And this weakness is exacerbated by its dependence on imports for virtually all it consumes, coupled with the lack of sufficient home-grown produce. The former minister of health added that The Bahamas is also among those most exposed to the potential imposition of tariffs by newly-elected US president, Donald Trump.

“We may pat ourselves on the back that we manage to feed most people and feed them well,” he added. “I am not terribly convinced that we have a whole lot of room for unanticipated challenges; any exigencies that may arise.”

Dr Sands was backed by Caron Shepherd, president of the Bahamas Agri Entrepreneurs Cooperative, who told Tribune Business: “We’re not as far down on the totem pole as other people when it comes to access to food but, on the flip side, we are not as healthy as we should be.

“That comes back to the mere fact that what we need to do is increase agricultural development so that our people are able to sustain themselves in a better and more nutritious way. We have too much access to fast food which is not good for us. If we grow our own food, that food is more healthy for us as Bahamians.”