By Clive Bacchus From WINN FM

St Kitts and Nevis (WINN): The inhumane , horrific treatment meted out to enslaved people in the past, and the present overindulgence of empowered Caribbean people, have led to the same result: high incidents of high blood pressure and diabetes that now threaten to eat up significant slices of national budgets.

Patrick Martin, St. Kitts and Nevis Chief Medical Officer, fingers nutritional excess as the driver of obesity rates of 75 percent in adults and 25 percent of children and adolescents in the country. On a recent edition of Voices, Dr Martin argued for sustainable lifestyle change.

“We have to make fresh foods cheaper. We may have to do what is done in the United States- subsidize farmers and fishers, especially in the area of energy so that the food they bring to the market remains affordable.”Martin told WINN 98.9.

“We have to pay attention to how we design and construct our physical spaces so that we don’t replace greenery with concrete and that people have adequate opportunities to walk, run, bike, swim.

On a recent edition of The Bigger Picture hosted by News Editor Ken Richards, excerpts from Sir Hilary’s Beckles, the chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, lecture on Reparations, put the spotlight on the health crisis facing the region.

“In every black family in the Caribbean, hypertension and diabetes is endemic and congenital. In my family almost everybody over 60 has hypertension and diabetes and it’s the same for your families and all our families, “said Sir Hillary, who argues that there is an explosion of ill health in the Caribbean caused by colonialism and slavery.

“You take a people, put them on an island for three hundred years, give them salt fish and salt pork every day, overwork them and undermine them, sell their children, rape their wives, make them work 20 hours a day- overwork, malnourish and take them through that stress profile of physical and mental terror. What you get? Hypertension and diabetes! It was the same then as it is now,” said Sir Hilary, in a presentation in St. Vincent and the Grenadines last year.

CARICOM ‘s reparations claims are to argued by London law Firm Leigh Day, according to media reports, and channeled through the United Nations.

Caribbean countries want former European colonizers and sale traders to meet demands for a number of measures including:

Provide medical assistance to tackle chronic diseases like hypertension and diabetes

Help poor communities in the region still suffering from the after-effects of slavery

Investment in literacy to improve education in the region

Help Caribbean people rebuild their history and identity through cultural exchanges with West Africa

Issue an unqualified apology for what was done to the enslaved peoples.

For more on this story go to: http://www.winnfm.com/news/local/8098-salt-and-stress-wreaking-havoc-in-post-slavery-caribbean#sthash.pUoKkqKc.dpuf