About eight people die daily in the Solomons as a result of the increasing prevalence of Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) related sickness.
The alarming statistics was issued by one of the country’s top surgeon Dr Chester Kuma in an interview with the Solomon Star on Thursday.
He is currently the Director of Adventist Health Initiative in Solomon Islands.
NCDs are linked to diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, cancer and heart attacks.
Dr Kuma along with his team is offering free health advise and check at the 2025 National Trade Fair currently at the SINU Park Village this week.
He once worked at the National Referral Hospital (NRH) and later moved to Australia and worked there for about 20 years.
Following his retirement, Dr. Kuma returned to Solomon Islands and joined the Adventist Health Initiative with a target to help his fellow citizens through the 10,000 Toes Campaign.
The campaign aims to reduce the epidemic of diabetes in Solomon Islands and the Pacific countries.
Dr. Kuma recalled while working as a surgeon he had amputated a lot of toes and legs due to diabetes.
And he realised his job failed to solve the problem.
“I was actually creating more problems.”
He cited an example where a father comes into the hospital with a diabetic foot sepsis (infection on foot) which can’t be controlled, only way to save that person is to chop off his infectious leg.
“If I chopped off his leg, he won’t be able to do anything properly. He won’t be able to go to the garden.
“And his wife will have to act like both mother and father to five children in the family,” Dr. Kuma said.
He added that by amputating people’s foot, it creates more problems for the family financially, psychological, socially and physically.
With the increasing prevalence rate of diabetes in the country, he thought there’s got to be a better way of doing this, Dr Kuma recalled.
He then resigned from being a surgeon at the hospital aiming to find if there’s any other way to address the problem.
Dr. Kuma added, eight people die in the country each day as a results of NCDs. Some of these diseases are related to diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, cancer and heart attacks.
“I don’t hear malaria kills or tuberculosis (TB) kill eight people in one day in the country, but NCDs kills people everyday in the country.”
He added, globally 40 million people die every single year from NCDs.
“In the Pacific, doctors are chopping off legs every 20 minutes. This is a major problem,” Dr. Kuma said.
While working in Australia, he thought about ways to help reduce this problem. It was then that the 10,000 Toes campaign was established.
“The 10,000 Toes campaign is a grassroot focuses lifestyle intervention program.
“We do not treat and heal people but do train people in rural communities to do health assessments,” he said.
Under the 10k Toes campaign campaign local youths are being trained as ’10,000 Toes Ambassadors’ to conduct simple health checks in their communities and regions.
He explained in Solomon Islands there are not many nurses or doctors in the communities. As a result ordinary youths have been trained to do blood pressure checks, blood sugar checks and taking heights and weights calculations.
So far, the 10,000 Toes campaign initiative has trained about 4,000 ’Ambassadors’ to help roll out the campaign.
The 10,000 Toes Campaign is still training ambassadors in Western province, Malaita, Isabel and other provinces, with the aim to cover the whole country, training ambassadors to help communities fight NCDs.
The campaign also does training assessments for smokers and alcohol addicts called “Stop Smoking Program” and “Addiction Recovery Program” respectively.
By participating at the 2025 National Trade Fair, Dr Kuma believes the public will learn more about campaign aims to help people check and know NCDs status at the same time advice people with health tips for their benefits.
By AGNES MENANOPO
Solomon Star, Honiara
