Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has urged cit­i­zens and Car­ni­val lovers to con­sume al­co­holic bev­er­ages in mod­er­a­tion as a re­cent sur­vey not­ed an in­crease in con­sump­tion es­pe­cial­ly among fe­males.

A re­cent Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO/WHO) STEP sur­vey con­duct­ed by the Min­istry of Health (MoH) re­vealed that al­co­hol con­sump­tion among the pop­u­la­tion has in­creased by 10.9 per cent since the pre­vi­ous study in 2011.

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on So­cial Ser­vices and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s in­quiry in­to Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (NCDs) yes­ter­day, chair­man Paul Richards high­light­ed the cul­tur­al shift to­wards high con­sump­tion dur­ing the four-month pe­ri­od span­ning Christ­mas and Car­ni­val. He ques­tioned the min­istry’s strat­e­gy to curb this trend, em­pha­sis­ing the sig­nif­i­cant im­pact such be­hav­iours could have on an­nu­al health da­ta.

Deyals­ingh ac­knowl­edged that ex­ces­sive al­co­hol con­sump­tion is un­wise at any time of the year but recog­nised that it tends to es­ca­late dur­ing Car­ni­val. He as­sured the com­mit­tee that the MoH and the Na­tion­al Al­co­hol and Drug Abuse Pre­ven­tion Pro­gramme (NADAPP) will con­tin­ue their an­nu­al pub­lic ad­vi­sories on re­spon­si­ble con­sump­tion dur­ing Car­ni­val in 2025.

He al­so point­ed to a con­cern­ing de­mo­graph­ic shift re­vealed by the sur­vey, par­tic­u­lar­ly among women.

“This is the ben­e­fit of con­duct­ing these sur­veys every 10 years,” Deyals­ingh said. “I want to ap­peal, not on­ly to women but to every­one — mod­er­a­tion is key. You are quite right, in this three-month pe­ri­od, we are go­ing to have ex­ces­sive use of al­co­hol, but NADAPP is on the ball.” Deyals­ingh stressed that in­di­vid­ual self-man­age­ment re­mains cru­cial to tack­ling NCD risk fac­tors.

Di­rec­tor of the NCD Unit, Dr Maria Clap­per­ton, ex­plained that the sur­vey, con­duct­ed on adults aged 18 to 69, as­sessed the preva­lence of key NCD risk fac­tors. Among the find­ings, 21.3 per cent of re­spon­dents re­port­ed to­bac­co use, with a high­er preva­lence among males. Al­co­hol con­sump­tion with­in 30 days of the sur­vey stood at 51.5 per cent, com­pris­ing 59.6 per cent of males and 43.4 per cent of fe­males.

“In 2011, the preva­lence of al­co­hol con­sump­tion was 40.6 per cent, so there has been a 10.9 per cent in­crease be­tween 2011 and 2024,” Clap­per­ton said.

“While males con­tin­ue to con­sume more al­co­hol than fe­males, we ob­served a sig­nif­i­cant 12.5 per cent in­crease in con­sump­tion among fe­males.”

The min­istry in­clud­ed men­tal health as an NCD fo­cus in 2018. The 2024 sur­vey as­sessed symp­toms of de­pres­sion over the past 12 months, re­veal­ing a preva­lence of 13.6 per cent, with the high­est rate among fe­males.

When ex­am­in­ing a com­bi­na­tion of five key risk fac­tors—cur­rent dai­ly smok­ing, in­ad­e­quate fruit and veg­etable in­take, low phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, over­weight sta­tus, and high blood pres­sure—on­ly 1.6 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion ex­hib­it­ed none. Con­verse­ly, 38.4 per cent dis­played three or more of these risk fac­tors.