One can only applaud the recently announced government initiative to target premature deaths resulting from non-communicable diseases (NCDs), as an indication that the Sultanate of Oman is not only stepping out from beneath the dark cloud of the pandemic and emerging into a new societal health vision, but also heralding a return, again, to holistic healthcare for all.
NCDs, in recent decades have, say prominent analysts, proven the number one cause of death and disability around the world, mainly in the guise of cancers, heart disease, respiratory diseases, renal failures, strokes, and diabetes, which even as we were ravaged by Covid-19, kept their relentless pressure on health sectors everywhere.
However, if there is a silver lining to the NCD dilemma, it is that scientific and medical advances continue to offer meaningful support and care options, to mitigate the worst of the effects of these illnesses, especially where low and middle-income societies, and less well-informed populations, are concerned.
Accounting for 74 per cent of all deaths, and with a late onset disability ratio during the last four years of life as severely affected by disability, it’s clear these are ailments that will not simply ‘go way’ either, as the recipe for sustaining effective programmes in the face of NCDs requires effective economic support, community, society, and school awareness and education programmes, community healthcare support, and most damning of all, responsible individual responses to NCDs.
Why? Because as many as three-quarters of all NCDs are preventable, with tobacco, alcohol, unhealthy and passive lifestyles, and air pollution counted as significant modifiable risk factors. I’m not suggesting for one moment that it is petulance or foolishness that see people struck down, or suffer terribly from these lifestyle choices, but that when science determines that for many of us, it is our weaknesses that have the capability to drive us to an early, or earlier, grave. So, we must trust the science.
Remarkably, the good choices, such as neglecting good dietary awareness, reduced alcohol intake, or tobacco use, and maintaining sensible physical fitness, not only reduce the risk of NCDs, but are the most effective economic response to the issue. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” but for all his profound influence upon intellectual history, he had a mental breakdown at 45 and died a decade later after ten years in a vegetative state. So, ironically I guess... “There but for the grace of God...”
I mean, apart from Homer Simpson, who else today would neglect their individual well-being for short-lived gratification? For 25 months now, we have been unwilling participants in a global lottery we didn’t want any part of. We were all losers in some way, and all did what we had to, to stay alive. Why wouldn’t you want to apply a similar rationale, in terms of living or dying, suffering or disability, to the even more callous NCDs?
From an environmental perspective, I believe the Sultanate of Oman is well placed, having generally a ‘clean,’ blue-sky environment most of the world would sell their souls for, and the Sultanate of Oman clearly takes its responsibilities as signatories to the 1992 Rio Declaration that promoted “a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.” Sustainable national economic imperatives, social concern, education, and action, and environmental awareness, require little more than a will beyond what could be seen as Governance 101 in any case, yet we always come back to NCDs being a matter of individual choice.
“We are,” as Marcus Tullius Cicero pronounced, “our own worst enemies.” But famously, he was put in his place by inventor/philosopher/politician, Benjamin Franklin, saying, “I have met my enemy, in the eyes of others.” We could well heed his words and maybe let our modesty, our behaviour, and our lack of excesses not only identify us as thoughtful, wise, and in terms of staying alive, for longer, considerate of those around us.
Don’t be seduced by the wiles of ‘la dolce vita,’ of incomparable indulgence, wretched gluttony, and debauchery. Instead, be guided by Epictetus, who said, “Fortify yourself with moderation, for it is an impregnable fortress.” Ramadhan Kareem.
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