Lifestyle Diseases in workplace

Any successive government fail to effectively address one of the fastest emerging public health issues in Papua New Guinea. The health system by now realigns its health services towards prevention programs.

The lifestyle disease is silently but at the fastest rate killing highly skilled workers png-losing-elites-through-lifestyle-diseases. Due to a lack of awareness on the lifestyle disease programs, the highly skilled workforce are becoming victims of lifestyle diseases thus affecting family income. The Papua New Guinea government's ability to raise tax income will also be affected thus shift in national budget allocations to other development priority areas. The story below is an example of a lifestyle disease (diabetic) that has destroyed one of the skilled Industrial Worker.

John (not his name), father of two beautiful children, age 38, a highly-skilled Industrial Worker. He works for many companies. He lives with his family in one of the towns in Papua New Guinea.

His lifestyle.
He drinks 12-24 bottles of beer every weekend. When an opportunity (friends offering him a beer) pops up during weekdays, he drinks beer between 6-12 bottles. Coke is "half of his life" that’s how he puts it. He takes 2-4 bottles of coke per day. In a week, 14-28 bottles. He takes 4 sweet cups of coffee with 2-5 teaspoons of sugar per day. On daily meal: family eat white rice, white bread/scone, tinned fish, veggies and fried foods. He’s a heavy smoker and betel nut chewer.

Like everyone, he did not care about his life until he felt sick. One day he went to the hospital and did his full blood count.

 Laboratory clinical results.
Glucose (sugar) level was high and elevated blood pressure.

Treatment.

1. The doctor prescript diabetic’s medication. 
2. He also consults lifestyle health advisers where they develop a lifestyle modification plan. 
3. Continue follow-up messages were sent as reinforcement messages to reduce the level of sugar. 

However, he fails to adhere to all the health plans as well as treatment intake.

On the first health consult, his glucose reading was 8.5 as indicates on the graph. After the first consult, he was faithful to medicine and follow all the healthy choices. On the second consult, the glucose dropped to the controllable level of 6.0mmol/L.

However, he was not consistent with the healthy choices and medication. From the 3rd to the 8th health consults, his glucose readings were very high, which slightly dropped at the controllable level on the 9th consult.

Nevertheless, he did not put his health as the number one life business, thus leading to uncaring lifestyle choices.

The condition becomes worse which saw him losing his life. The uncured sore appears on his right toe. The doctor chopped the toes off. However, the condition got worse that leads him to lose his right leg to diabetics. As a result, he’s now a crippled man.

Due to uncaring lifestyle choices, more burden is now on his wife to look after him as well as the two children. This will setback the children's education, and their upbringing.

Finally, the man died from diabetes and left behind two children with his wife.

Organically growing local food in Papua New Guinea.
Papua New Guinea produces some of the world’s best organically farmed garden foods and fruits. These are some of the locally grown organic fresh veggies and fruits.

All over Papua New Guinea, local markets sell many of these fresh veggies and fruits at affordable prices. They are good for health than those manufactured goods sold in the stores.

The lifestyle disease in Papua New Guinea is avoidable as we have organically grown foods and fruits available at local markets. The choice people make will determine their health.

Why are people running too high on carbohydrate drinks like coke than a local produce fresh coconut juice? The cost of coconut juice is cheap than the high sugar-based drinks like coke. Figure #4 is coconut juice from Markham valley. It cost just K1.00 and Coke cost K2.00 to K3.50.

The important message to ALL Papua New Guineans is: Once you hit the sickbed, the chair you are sitting on will depart from you. All the happiness and dreams will go under the bridge.

Run after good health than the material wealth. The glory of this world is only added unto people with good health, so follow healthy lifestyle choices.