The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, through its Health­Care Com­mit­tee, host­ed an event ti­tled “Trans­form­ing Health­care: Bridg­ing Gaps for a Health­i­er Fu­ture,” aimed at ad­dress­ing the grow­ing im­pact of Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (NCDs).

Chair­man of the Health­Care Com­mit­tee, Bar­ry Tang­well, de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress, out­lin­ing the Com­mit­tee’s “Triple Win” ap­proach for NCD pre­ven­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, chron­ic con­di­tions such as heart dis­ease, stroke, can­cer, and di­a­betes ac­count for more than 62 per­cent of deaths an­nu­al­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with three-quar­ters oc­cur­ring in per­sons un­der 70 years old.

Fol­low­ing the Chair­man’s re­marks, a pan­el dis­cus­sion fea­tured Bar­ry Tang­well, Dr. Hen­ry Bai­ley of the UWI Health Eco­nom­ics Unit, Dr. Kim­ber­ly Badal of the Caribbean Can­cer Re­search In­sti­tute, and Al­varo So­to of Roche Phar­ma. The ses­sion was mod­er­at­ed by Katyane Boland-Ram­nar­ine, AVP of Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion.