Above: Director of the National STI/HIV Programme, Dr. Kevin Harvey (right), greets Dr Fitzroy Henry, director, Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (JIS Photo)

Dr Kevin Harvey, the director of Jamaica’s National STI/HIV Programme is encouraging Caribbean health institutions to play a pivotal role in ensuring access to healthy foods in the region. “Having regard to the inextricable link between nutrition and non-communicable diseases, our regional health institutions must reposition to take advantage of what could be the biggest decade for food security and nutrition,” he said at a joint meeting of the scientific and policy advisory committee of the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute yesterday in New Kingston. “There are many things that separate us as national states,” he said. “But among the things that unite us is the compelling need to secure the agenda to achieve access to safe foods.” Harvey mentioned the UN’s high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases, which is scheduled for September and will focus on the prevention and control of NCDs worldwide.

–Jamaica Information Service