By Arthur Green, STAR Writer

St Thomas

Hypertension is on the increase in St. Thomas, and more so in the White Horses community. This is the finding of a medical team from the United States of America, which is on its seventh trip to Jamaica.

The medical practitioners, who make the trip yearly as part of the upliftment Jamaica annual celebrations, were participating in a health fair put on by the award-winning NGO from the east.

According to Dr. Michelle Fussier, one of the doctors on the trip, approximately 60 per cent of the attendees to the fair, who were seen, had hypertension disease. And these figures are cause for concern.

Furthermore, another member of the team asserted that in light of these findings, poor nutrition could be a contributing factor. At the same time, in her own assessment of some of the possible causes, Executive Director of Upliftment Jamaica, Sandra Kenton-Fraser, attributed poverty to be a primary cause for the inadequacy of proper dietary intake. She was joined in a call for more corporate support to be given to social programme for the community by Dr. Desmond Poyser, a local doctor from Portland who has been making voluntary contribution of medical services to the Upliftment Jamaica Programme in St Thomas for many years. He was one of many awardees last year.