PESHAWAR (NNI): Dietary risk factors such as excessive consumption of fats, sugars, and salt along with tobacco use and environmental factors are main reasons of increasing incidence of non-communicable diseases in Pakistan.
Only tobacco is taking away 464 person per day from our families mostly young and in the most productive age of their lives while more than 33 million people are diagnosed diabetics.
Majority of Pakistanis use higher than 25 mg of sugars per day, 5 mg of salts per day while around 6% of energy is taken from fats whereas it should be less than 2%. The disease and death situation is so grave that it is the cause of around 65% of pre-mature deaths in the country of which around 29% are due to cardio-vascular diseases (CVDs).
In order to address the issue, KP Food Safety and Halal Food Authority (KPFA) and the Centre for Governance and Public Accountability (CGPA) held a seminar today as part of a series of dialogues on this important issue of NCDs and food governance.
Muhammad Anwar, Executive Director, CGPA, said that while big (unhealthy) food is a serious risk factor for diseases, small towns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are replete with unhealthy foods for children.
“Parents need to be educated while we need better policies for improved food governance to protect our population from diseases, disabilities, and deaths. Preventive healthcare investment actually provides social protection to people”, he added.
Shahzad Alam Khan, Cluster Coordinator on NCDs for World Health Organization, while presenting evidence about the prevalence and cause of NCDS said, “most of the risk factors are modifiable such as reducing consumption of harmful ingredients in diets, healthy lifestyles, and provision of essential healthcare services at the government health facility levels”.
“WHO sponsored HEARTS programme is a specially designed programme for primary and secondary prevention of CVDs and diabetes based on technology, and medicines”, he added.
Dr. Waseem, Health Economist from WHO argued that there is a need to increase taxes on unhealthy foods and tobacco and new nicotine products while local governments should be clearly mandated to participate in health promotion activities and govern the informal sectors of food supplies.
Dr. Hajra Ghani, Assistant Professor, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Khyber Medical University, said that Ramzan packages should subsidise healthy foods for the poor rather than ghee and sugar”. Our doctors are not adequately taught about diet and nutrition related aspects of healthcare, and our medical curriculum needs some basic changes”, she added.
Dr. Yasir Durrani, Associate Prof. Department of Food Sciences and Technology, and Dr. Fazia, Department of Food Sciences, University of Peshawar, emphasized on the importance of screening facilities for hypertension and diabetes and inter-governmental coordination for better regulation of food supply.
Dr. Said Wahab, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Agriculture, Peshawar said, “strict checks, monitoring and regulatory frameworks must be brought in to control adulteration at milk shops and supply of substandard bakery items”.
Dr. Abdul Sattar Shah, Deputy Director, KP Food Safety and Halal Food Authority (KPFA), said that the authority is improving its capacity to test food items for harmful ingredients, and taking penal action against the wrongdoers. However, much of food adulteration must be dealt under criminal law system to improve enforcement.
“There is a strong need to build policy frameworks for federal level coordination for food governance. We are trying hard to build such mechanism along with PSQCA and other provincial food authorities”, he added.
Zubair Faisal Abbasi, advisor on public policies for Centre for Governance and Public Accountability (CGPA) said that Pakistan shows serious gaps and lapses in food governance. It needs to create new and also strengthen the already existing institutional arrangements to ensure that international best-practice polices are implemented.
“There is a strong need to update the mandatory standards about the composition of ingredients in manufactured foods, printing of easy-to-understand colour-based front of packet labelling (FOPL), and efforts to increase food diversity as well as nutritional density of foods”, he said while talking about availability of safe foods for NCDs prevention.
Other participants in the policy seminar also shared their views and said that Pakistan must develop its policy framework such as fiscal policies related to taxation, subsidies, and healthcare expenditures which are pro-health.
Dr. Sahib Alam, Chairman, Department of Agriculture Chemistry and Biochemistry, said farm inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides also need to be looked at to ensure that the concept of OneHealth is incorporated in food governance. NNI
