PESHAWAR    -    Ex­perts at a seminar here on Tuesday underscored the need for better food governance to prevent spread of non-communi­cable diseases (NCD) in the country.

They said 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. 

They said 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, 5mg 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 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 NCD’s for World Health Organisation, 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.” 

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, empha­sised on the importance of screening facilities for hypertension and dia­betes and inter-govern­mental coordination for better regulation of food supply.