Dominicans are again being challenged to join the fight against non-communicable diseases, this time by the church.
The call came during the Hon Edward Registe memorial service in Grand bay on Wednesday evening.
Parish Priest Father Branker John urged his captive audience to make some life style changes by eating right, exercising and visiting the Doctor at least once a year. He says Non-Communicable Diseases are a major challenge in Dominica.
Father John said one year ago he challenged his Parish to make the necessary lifestyle changes and one year later the passing of the late Hon Edward Registe is another opportunity to renew that call.
“NCDs are a problem in Dominica. It’s a problem. It is a serious problem, and it is worse because our population is small. We cannot afford to lose young vibrant people. We cannot. We don’t have the population to sustain this, so we have to do what we must to stay healthy as a nation. And Ed’s memorial is an opportunity to reflect on that because he was not the best at taking care of his health. So one year later we have to reflect on this and see where we are because too many of us are dying of NCDs. Too many Dominicans are dying of those things,” Fr. John stated.
Fr. John said the memorial service was another way of keeping the memory and vision of the late Hon Ed Registe alive.
“Just because someone is gone from this life, they are not gone from our memory. We must always remember. If we keep forgetting, we will have no foundation. It is important to remember. Remembering is important for the building of the future. We have to remember and we are remembering Ed and all that he wanted for this community; all that he did for the community even before he was Parliamentary Representative. Ed worked very hard before he became Parl Rep. and so we are remembering those things and we are remembering him. We are remembering the good that he strived to do and we keep that in focus,” he noted.
He noted that the late Hon Edward Registe had a lot of plans which he wanted to accomplish for the people of the Grand bay constituency saying some of them should be pursued.
“So the feasible ones those we can implement, we must try to implement. We musn’t put them in a cabinet somewhere and forget about them, if they are feasible we should try to accomplish them. We just don’t block people out of our memory just because they have died, no; especially if that person or those persons did good things for the community. We always have to remember them and Ed was one such person. So that is another reason why we are here tonight, to remember Ed and to remember what he wanted to accomplish for this community,” Fr. John added.
