State of country’s health to be measured

Dr Laurence van
Hanswijck de Jonge,
Research Coordinator

Friday,  March 3, 2006

The Health Services Authority (HSA) will be launching a nationwide survey to gather data on health, disease and the risk factors of disease for a National Health Registry.

This information will then be used to focus medical care, treatment and prevention on people who are most at risk for diseases such as diabetes in this country.

It will also form the foundation for the medical research programme being implemented at the Cayman Islands Hospital, which will in turn, attract international grants and specialist research doctors.

Research coordinator, Dr Laurence van Hanswijck de Jonge, who was brought on board to develop the health registry, said participating in the survey will give people in the community a chance to directly impact the health care for everyone in the country.

“What if you as an individual can help contribute to decreasing the pain of your mother or your child?” said Dr van Hanswijck de Jonge.

“Of course, we would spend any amount of time and pay any price. The information from this survey will gives us an indication where the critical health problems and risk factors are specifically for this country.

“So we can focus our primary care based on evidence rather than trends that are happening globally that may not necessarily be applicable to the Cayman Islands. For example diabetes - it is an increasing global trend that is emerging which we need to measure nationally before we can concretely, based on evidence, implement primary care and interventions.”

Dr van Hanswijck de Jonge added that disease caught in earlier stages has a snowball effect, because the long-term health of the community is better and health care costs are lower. A healthier individual is more productive and less of a burden on families as well as social services, insurance companies and the economy.

She explained that the HSA already has fragments of information, but it is not comprehensive so it does not give a good picture of the overall health of the community. Moreover, there is no data collected on patients who seek health care abroad or in the private sector. She explained that once the data is collected then the real work will begin analysing it for specific health questions.

“Once we have measured the extent of the disease burden and risk factors which are specific to the Cayman Islands we can see what the trends are between, for instance, smoking and lung cancer in different age groups or the national age distribution for prostrate cancer,” said Dr Laurence van Hanswijck de Jonge.

“We can then assess whether, for instance, prostrate cancer is emerging at a younger age here than in other countries and if there are different attributable risk factors. This will allow us to investigate whether there are significant trends within the population, and subsequently targeting our medical approach to diseases in an efficient manner.

“Assessing the countries health, disease and risk baseline will provide us with the instrument to contribute empirically, internationally, to help understand disease on a global level. In such a way we can help the health of the nation as well as in the future contribute to better understanding certain diseases, for instance cancer, or diabetes.”

Dr van Hanswijck de Jonge explained the survey has questions on various diseases and risk factors associated with diseases such as obesity, cancer, smoking, diet and demographic information such as sex, age and ethnicity, disabilities and medication.

The survey will allow people to answer questions anonymously about their health, wherever they receive treatment.

Since there will be no names required on the survey, people can be assured of their privacy and will feel confident in being honest. The survey will be conducted at gathering places such as supermarkets and churches and will also be available on the Internet.

A minimum of 6,000 questionnaires is required for the database, but she is targeting 50 percent or higher of the population.

shurna@caymannetnews.com

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