There’s an insufficient balance of healthy people in VI– BVIHSA Chairman
He said during the recent Standing Finance Committee (SFC) that there are more persons in the elderly bracket, and with that comes the issue of an increase in the cost of healthcare.
According to the SFC report, Mr Smith stated “that the biggest strength is a committed, educated and highly competent staff. However, there are some structural issues with financing which has to do with the base formula for funding the BVIHSA through the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme.”
Mr Smith also mentioned that the initial scheme was developed many years ago and the NHI scheme’s “formula needs to align with present circumstances.”
'Substantial amount of underlying risk factors'
The SFC report summarised his words stating: “The demographics of the BVI indicated that there is a higher number of elderly. He said that as we age the cost of health care increases. The Chairman noted that insurance schemes are supported by balancing and leveraging risk and that it is based on numbers. He said that as it stands, there is not a sufficient balance of healthy people because our demographics have a substantial amount of underlying risk factors for high rates of diabetes, hypertension and behavioural and mental issues.”
The BVIHSA’s Chairman also said the present physical infrastructure does not support the type of healthy lifestyles that would lower the risk factors and noted that addressing those factors in collaboration with NHI as well as support from the Ministry is “a high priority.”
Mr Smith stated that there are plans to strengthen the internal controls of the BVIHSA by conducting a comprehensive needs assessment and he hopes to have it commenced by or before this month.
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9 Responses to “There’s an insufficient balance of healthy people in VI– BVIHSA Chairman ”
But on a serious note, this has been spoken about so many times over the years and the government still doesn't seem to understand the problem.
This is a multifaceted problem that will take several perspectives to solve as well as some internal awareness and possibly community help.
1. Nothing about our culture encourages health.
a) We don't have bike lanes or proper side walks for pedestrians to feel safe when they're out on the road. People keep getting bitten my stray and poorly managed dogs. I've seen a few blog posts where people have talked about being afraid to go out walking because they're afraid of being either ran over or bitten by a stray dog.
b) We don't have much interest in sports. We don't really support our athletes like they need to be supported. Not enough of our kids are playing any kind of sport. We don't have that many adults just partaking in sports as hobbies. We aren't outside people. Every day I hear someone complain about how hot the sun is and all they did was walk from their car to their AC office and before that they were home sitting in their AC or in front a fan.
"Comfort is the enemy of progress." PT Barnum
c) Food is too bloody expensive, especially healthy food. It's a lot cheaper to buy something like ramen or Mac and cheese and feed a family than to buy the ingredients for a salad. COVID only made things worse. Truly, in this day and age, health is a issue of class. Many people are malnourished but not hungry. It's called food insecurity. You fill up on fries or cookies. You get the calories and the mass in your belly to stop your stomach from growling but none of the nutrients needed to grow or maintain metabolic health. It's only going to get worse as the rich get richer and the poor gets poorer. Many people are in the position where they will be well enough to work and generate revenue but sick enough to die before they can outlive their usefulness to the system or collect the fruits of their labour. We don't want to admit it but good health is becoming a privilege and not a right.
d) Poor education. Many are at fault for this. The food industry, for one, has spent decades lying on different types of foods, spreading propaganda to avoid having to be held accountable for selling bad food that sometimes isn't even food. Many people are completely unaware that what they are putting in their mouths does nothing for them at best, harms them at worse. At least we know Scato's is bad for us. Some things marked as healthy like "fat-free" products are just as harmful and making us sick but many are convinced it's good for them. This past year I've been reading about nutrition and it's just complex. I'm convinced it's not good enough to just teach it as a biology topic in school but rather kids should be taught nutrition as young as possible and reminded in refresher courses every few years. Possibly offer a few free courses at the college for adults. Another things is people need to get real about health. The concept of "sometimes food" is propaganda. There's no sometimes for you if your BMI is over 40. You're in real trouble.
I've also talked to parents with overweight kids, (And I was an overweight kid myself so I had this experience growing up.) Many think their kids will just grow out of it. Many think things like obesity and diabetes are genetic and inevitable. (Even I believed this misconception.) They aren't. Something can be done about it. It doesn't have to be your kid's future.
Many don't seem to understand how badly off their kids really are. The longer they keep their extra weight, the more likely they are to suffer from health problems and some of the first signs might already be there. The blasé attitude towards their obesity just sets them up to fail. If someone has been obese their whole life and gets diagnosed with a problem at 30, they probably were showing the early warning signs from the time they were 10. It's just that at 30 their symptoms are pronounced enough to be noticed. They spent 20+ years being sick and didn't know it.
For example, I had black knees and elbows as a child. I thought this was normal for black people until high school where I noticed some of my slimmer friends didn't have black knees and elbows. I noticed some of my heavier friends also had black necks and scaly skin even if they used lotion. As an adult I learnt that these are the early warning signs of insulin resistance which can lead to diabetes. I don't have diabetes but I started eating less sugar and minimizing snacking. I started feeling better and seeing improvement in my skin.
If your skin or your kid's skin is randomly starting to blacken, especially at places that crease, you should go talk to a doctor about that. If you have fairer skin, you may have dark brown patches, rather than black patches.
2. Perhaps this leads back to point one but we don't have a good community. Human beings are social creatures. We need to socialize to maintain our well being.
For example, there are studies that show that people who eat alone are more likely to overeat. This is because we have neurons in our brains that mirror our environment and other human beings around us. When we eat as a group, once one person stops eating others are more likely to follow. Try paying attention to this the next time you eat in a group. Everyone stops eating around the same time. But the advent of technology as it exists now means a lot of people are alone too long. They don't have the social cues that would come from their environment to stop them. These neurons aren't just active when we eat, they also work when we speak and listen to others, when we see others moving (like dancing) our mirror neurons are firing, making us want to move too.
Our body releases chemicals when we have skin to skin contact like when we hug each other. These chemicals do things like elevate our mood, lower stress, lower blood pressure, suppress our hunger, etc. Seeing an actual human face in person activates a different part of our brains than seeing a picture of a human or a face on a screen. Sunlight helps regulate our mood and our sleep cycle, as well as trigger Vitamin D production. When we get upset when we're in a group of our peers who respect us, we're more likely to control our emotions than if we were alone or in a group of strangers (who's opinions about us wouldn't matter to us).
We need to be with other human beings, outside, doing stuff together because it makes us, the individual, into better people.
We don't have enough community events to touch on a variety of interests. We have block parties but we don't really have say a district baseball team or a district steel band to do competitions if we want, for example. We don't have events to unify each other but people need people. Everyone stays home and stays on their phones but even if you talk over the internet, there's no substitute for in person contact. How many people actually know their neighbours? We treat our elderly and disable like crap. We don't have the resources and facility to properly care for them and make them feel included. We kinda make them feel like they're only supposed to be in a corner until it's time to flaunt them or bury them. It's not good.
We don't really sign our kids up for things like Girl's Brigade or Boy's Brigade any more. What happened to our Jr. Heritage dancers?
We don't behave like a society that cares. This is a failure both on the part of the individual and the government.
The individual needs to care because there's a possibility you might actually live long but in a sick body and that's not a good fate at all. Overweight people are more likely to develop chronic lifestyle disease, develop mental health problems (especially depression), achieve less in school, be judge harsher my society, have less romantic partners, less likely to procreate, more likely to be rejected for jobs applications even when qualified, spend more money (as they often have to pay more for things like clothes and medical care), etc.
The government need to stop treating this like a political topic because unhealthy people means a smaller workforce which means higher taxes on those who are working. If taxes get too high, there will come a time where it is more beneficial to not work than to work. This will collapse the economy and society and harm the territory.
The irony is it's a chicken and egg story. Are people unhealthy because they lack the resources to properly take care of themselves or do people lack the resources to take care of themselves because they are unhealthy? Do people develop metabolic illnesses like hypertension and diabetes because they are obese or is obesity and these illnesses a symptom of a bigger problem that only gets detected once these illnesses start to manifest?
Funny, we've spent the past 2 years fretting over a cold that wouldn't have been as deadly if more people were in shape yet the topic of actual physical health was completely social distanced by many politicians and doctors. The real existential crisis has been going on for decades. Our response to COVID actually exacerbated this problem. We are genuinely at the point where many elderly may literally have to work until they die because the young people who should replace them will be just as sick as them or completely disillusioned and checked out of society. We've been failing for a long time. We're the frog sitting in the pot. I guess we're only now starting to realize the water is a bit too hot. Keep talking about this like it's a joke and we'll boil to death.