Dr. Cherian Varghese. — PHOTO: K.V. SRINIVASAN

CHENNAI: Schools should adopt a comprehensive health policy to ensure that good food habits are cultivated at a young age, said Cherian Varghese, India coordinator, Non-Communicable Diseases and Mental Health, World Health Organisation.

Schools under the Central Board of Secondary Education have adopted a comprehensive health policy where schools evaluate their wards and are in turn evaluated on their compliance on parameters such as diet, knowledge of anatomy, safety and mental health, said the WHO expert who was in Chennai on Sunday.

The health promoting school initiative will bring into its fold children who will learn young the value of good, healthy life. He called for a multi-sector policy that includes several departments such as agriculture, industry, sports and youth affair, education and health. According to Dr. Varghese, unlike diseases such as diarrhoea that respond to treatment immediately, diabetes and cancer have no `quick fixes'. Poor prevention strategies strain the resources as the treatment is for an extended period of time and the diseases result in multiple complications. "India needs to have a re-look at the care pattern for non-communicable diseases also. Investment has to be huge in government district headquarters hospitals. There is need to look at alternative finance."

Roping in management professionals to govern hospitals and computerisation of hospitalisation details would save time and prevent repetition of the procedures. Government hospitals could spend resources in regular follow-up mechanism, device health cards and even consider risk pooling to raise funds and set up a corpus. "All this requires political will," he said citing the example of southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia which have set up health promotion foundations that are supervised by the head of State. Tax from sale of items such as tobacco and alcohol are pooled and the fund is later used to promote/sponsor events.

Succumbing to diabetes or cancer is no more a personal issue, related to personal lifestyle. The administration must provide a healthy environment. Researchers are now focusing on `programming hypothesis' where our ancestors maintained a cycle of deliberate starvation and plenty through the year and the body was programmed to convalesce during periods of deprivation.

The Government could look at distribution of vegetables and fruits through public distribution or cooperative stores thus ensuring better returns for the farmers and for people too, he said.

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