Black Immigrant Daily News

Some 600 women in Jamaica now have an opportunity to get screened for breast cancer courtesy of the JN Group, which experienced an oversubscription of its offer to finance mammograms for 500 women aged 40 and over, within less than a week.

The offer formed part of the group’s fifth renewal of its Power of Pink campaign, this year held under the theme ‘Take the Steps’, to commemorate Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

The campaign is targeted at educating Jamaicans and raising funds for cancer research and support for persons affected by the disease. In addition, Jamaican women were given the opportunity to sign up for a free mammogram via the JN Group website; or persons could nominate women over the age of 40 for screening.

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer among women in Jamaica and screening for early detection can be unaffordable to many who may have to fork out as much as $9,000 in private facilities. Care is cheaper in public facilities, but mammography machines are only situated at the country’s three type 1 hospitals: The University Hospital of the West Indies, the Kingston Public Hospital, both in the Corporate Area and the Cornwall Regional Hospital in St James. The distance for women who do not live in these parishes makes access limited.

Saniah Spencer, an executive for marketing at the JN Group said the organisation, which has had a long and productive partnership with the Jamaica Cancer Society, said the overwhelming response to the offer is confirmation that more women are aware of the importance of early detection, but that many need help to “take the step.”

“We are very happy to know that we will be able to help so many Jamaican women with taking one of the steps to know where they stand with breast cancer. And, I use the word ‘step’ because the second step under our Power of Pink ‘Take the Steps’ campaign is to get checked, in other words, get a mammogram done as an early detection can significantly increase one’s chance of survival,” she explained.

She said The JN Group is aware that the cost to get a mammogram can be relatively expensive for many women, and in the quest to help save lives, the organisation saw it fit to offer this solution for a second year.

Speaking on an episode of the JN Group breast cancer awareness YouTube series, Keeping Abreast of Your Health, Dr Andre Williams, oncologist, said the main objective is to try and detect cancer early, and, therefore, women should get their mammograms done annually, once they reach the age of 40.

“The whole principle behind that is if you can detect it early, then you reduce the likelihood that it would be caught at a time when treatment is more involved, harder to achieve, expensive and more devastating to the woman. We really want to be able to identify breast cancer in women as early as possible in their lives,” Dr Williams said.

Acting executive director of the Jamaica Cancer Society (JCS), Michael Leslie, while speaking at The JN Group Power Pink Pop-Up Session outside the JN Bank Half Way Tree branch recently, noted that although women over 40 are more at risk of the disease, he encouraged women under 40 to do frequent breast self-examinations at home, indicating that the data has been showing an increase in the number of younger women developing breast cancer.

Leslie noted that 1,208 new breast cancer cases were diagnosed in 2020, which was an increase of more than 25 per cent when compared to 2018. Of the 1,208 cases, there was an estimated 637 breast cancer deaths, which Leslie referred to as “alarming statistics.”

“Jamaica’s breast cancer rates are actually worsening over the years. Sixty-seven out of every 100,000 women have breast cancer, and it is predicted that one out of every 21 women in Jamaica will develop breast cancer in her lifetime,” he disclosed.

The JCS provides subsidised mammography services, and mammograms can also be done at privately-owned institutions across the country.

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door Ivan Cairo PARAMARIBO — Milieuorganisatie Probios heeft dinsdag tijdens een persconferentie aangegeven dat Staatsolie verantwoordelijk is voor de recente

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A delegation from the Cayman Islands Government and private sector will attend the 63rd annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show (FLIBS) taking place from 26th – 30th October, 2022.

Teams from the Ministry and Department of Tourism, the Cayman Islands Shipping Registry, and the Cayman Islands Angling Club, will work to diversify our islands’ domestic tourism product by marketing to high net-worth individuals who attend this event.

The Department of Tourism’s exhibition booth, which will be a shared space with the CI Angling Club, will take an integrated marketing approach showcasing Cayman’s water sports offerings focusing on sport and recreational fishing. The intention is to expand awareness of what the Cayman Islands has to offer to sport fishing enthusiasts while promoting our islands as a premier sports fishing location and a luxury vacation destination that is just one hour away from the city of Miami.

“The Fort Lauderdale Boat Show is the largest in-water boat show in the world and is a prime opportunity for luxury yacht and boat manufacturers to display their newest products. Water sports and sport fishing are a vital part of our tourism product, and the Ministry and Department of Tourism is proud to have a presence there,” said Hon. Kenneth Bryan, Minister for Tourism and Transport.

As a 30 year member of the Angling Club, Parliamentary Secretary Heather Bodden will also be in attendance. “The Cayman Islands is known as an international fishing destination which attracts visitors from all over the USA, Europe and the Caribbean to fish in our waters. It is vital for us to go to Fort Lauderdale at this time to promote Cayman on a whole but to also showcase that we are a world class fishing destination,” she said.

While in Florida, both Ministry officials will meet with key players in the sport fishing world, including executives of the Bonnier Corporation – the largest outdoor publication company in the USA, In The Bite Magazine and marine artist and established influencer in the international sport fishing community, Carey Chen.

“As part of our promotional travel, we wanted to showcase the Cayman Islands to yacht owners and representatives in these marine publications because they are aligned with our target market. Many of these yachts are registered in the Cayman Islands, so there is an existing synergy between this specific demographic and our tourism product. I’m looking forward to meeting and networking more closely with these industry leaders,” said Minister Bryan.

One of the highlights of this year’s trip is the International Game Fish Association’s (IGFA) banquet which honours recipients of the Tommy Gifford Award. This year’s Caribbean Offshore Pioneer Award will be presented to Caymanian, Captain Atlee Evans.

“Captain Atlee is one of the founding members of the Cayman Islands Angling Club and we are thrilled that he will be honoured, this is another proud moment for our islands,” offered Ms. Bodden.

The Cayman Islands Shipping Registry will also host its own booth showcasing the benefits of vessel registration within the Cayman Islands.

(Source: CI GOVT)

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London (AP) Harmeet Singh Gill was excited to hear that Rishi Sunak would become Britain’s first prime minister of colour — news that came as he celebrated the Diwali festival in a London neighbourhood sometimes called Little India.

“It’s almost a watershed moment,” the 31-year-old said as he volunteered at the cavernous dome-topped house of worship that serves the Sikh community in west London’s Southall neighbourhood. “It’s just a sign of 21st-century Britain, where it doesn’t matter what background you’re from now, that you can rise up the ranks to the positions of power.”

But, for many people of colour in the UK, it’s not so simple. Sunak, 42, will be the first Hindu and the first person of South Asian descent to lead the country, which has a long history of colonialism and has often struggled to welcome immigrants from its former colonies — and continues to grapple with racism and wealth inequality.

King Charles III asked Sunak, whose parents moved to Britain from India in the 1960s, to form a new government Tuesday, a day after he was chosen leader of the governing Conservative Party.

The milestone is doubly significant for many people with Asian roots because it comes during Diwali, the five-day festival of light celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains.

Earlier this year, Sunak, a practicing Hindu, spoke about the significance of lighting Diwali candles outside the official Downing Street residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the post he held for two years until he resigned in July.

“It was one of my proudest moments that I was able to do that on the steps of Downing Street,” he told the Times of London. “And it meant a lot to a lot of people and it’s an amazing thing about our country.”

It wasn’t always that way in Britain.

In 1968, Conservative lawmaker Enoch Powell delivered his infamous “rivers of blood” speech decrying mass migration and advocating assistance for immigrants to “return home.”

As recently as 1987, there were no people from ethnic minority backgrounds in the House of Commons. One Asian and three Black members were elected to Parliament that year.

Numbers have increased steadily since, with 65 people from ethnic minority groups, or 10% of the House of Commons, elected during the last general election in 2019. That still isn’t fully representative of the UK as a whole, where 13 per cent of the population identify as ethnic minorities.

Sunak’s win is evidence of this progress — a step toward something better, said Tariq Modood, director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol.

“I would say the most important thing about today is that the majority, the overwhelming majority of Conservative members of Parliament, chose as their first choice a youngish man of Indian descent, making him the first British prime minister of colour,” he said Monday. “And I think that other parties will note that, the Labour Party most certainly, and will want to catch up with that, if not try and do better.”

But Sunak isn’t typical of the millions of people from Asian, African and Caribbean backgrounds who still face barriers in employment and education.

The son of a doctor and a pharmacist, Sunak earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Oxford and a master’s in business administration from Stanford University before going to work for Goldman Sachs and then moving into the hedge fund industry, where he made a fortune in finance. He is married to Akshata Murty, daughter of Indian billionaire N.R. Narayana Murthy, founder of the global information technology company Infosys.

Sunak was criticized earlier this year when British news media reported that his wife took advantage of rules allowing her to avoid UK taxes on her foreign income. She has since promised to give up her “non-domiciled” status and pay all her taxes in Britain.

On a broader level, Indians have fared better economically than other minority groups in Britain.

Indians earned an average of 14.43 pounds ($16.29) an hour, or 15.5 per cent more than white British residents, in 2019, the latest figures available from the Office for National Statistics. By contrast, people from Pakistan and Bangladesh earned about 15% less than white people, and Black people earned 6.9 per cent less.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the first Muslim woman to attend Cabinet when she served in former Prime Minister David Cameron’s government, said she thought Sunak would be a unifying figure for all British Asians.

“But there has been a huge debate on whether or not this is something that we should celebrate, and I think we do celebrate the fact that this is visible diversity,” Warsi told the BBC.

“But it has to go beyond visible diversity. There have to be young children today from poor homes, going to ordinary state schools, who say that they, too, could become prime minister.”

Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think tank focused on immigration, identity and race, called Sunak’s victory a “historic moment” that wouldn’t have been possible just a decade ago. But, he said, the struggle to end discrimination isn’t over.

“I hope that Sunak will acknowledge that not everybody has enjoyed his advantages in life,” Katwala said. “Rishi Sunak reaching 10 Downing Street does not make Britain a perfect meritocracy. While there is more to do, this is a hopeful sign of progress against the prejudices of the past.”

Sathnam Sanghera, a columnist for the Times of London, said Sunak’s promotion was “amazing” as he recalled the hatred and violence faced by Black and Asian people in Britain in the past.

Immigrants of his parents’ generation still remember the white gangs that roamed the streets “looking for West Indians, Africans or Asians to assault,” and coming home to find excrement stuffed through their mailboxes.

“Some people on the left appear to be reluctant to say it, but it is undeniably a great thing that, in Rishi Sunak, Britain has its first brown prime minister,” Sanghera wrote. “Frankly, I never expected to see such a thing in my lifetime.”

But while Sunak’s success will boost the aspirations of young people throughout Britain, more work needs to be done, Sanghera said.

“Just because we have one British Hindu in charge, and just because some brown ethnic groups are doing well, it doesn’t mean that Britain has defeated racism,” he wrote. “No more than Barack Obama’s election as president represented the defeat of racism in America.”

Those challenges are on display in Southall, where two-thirds of the people have roots in South Asia and real incomes are about 20 per cent of the London average, according to the local governing council.

That means people in this community will be disproportionately hit by soaring energy prices and rising food bills that have pushed inflation to a 40-year high of 10.1 per cent.

But shopkeeper Pratik Shah was optimistic as he stood before a wall of saris in glittering pink, mint and silver and talked about the potential for the progress he sees in Sunak’s leadership.

“It might help the country in getting to a higher position,” he said. “And I feel that the whole Asian community has that trust in him.”

By Danica Kirkland

Jo Kearney contributed.

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The National Council on Public Transportation (NCOPT) has welcomed plans for sustainable road transport for Saint Lucia, including a public survey by the Ministry of Infrastructure, Ports, Transport, Physical Development, and Urban Renewal and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).

NCOPT President Godfrey Ferdinand told St Lucia Times that the organisation wants the survey completed as soon as possible and recommended fares, new routes, discipline, and upgrades implemented.

“We want to see the results because some of the recommendations from the council, from the different associations are never implemented,” Ferdinand observed.

For example, the NCOPT President recalled that the government agreed to a disciplinary committee for the public transport sector.

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“They gave us a month within which the disciplinary committee would have started and implemented, but nothing so far,” Ferdinand lamented.

He said it was frustrating for the public transport sector, as some bus drivers need discipline.

According to Ferdinand, the sector needs to send a message that it cannot be business as usual.

He said the NCOPT would like the sustainable road transport survey results to become public.

“This survey was supposed to be completed in December,” he told St Lucia Times.

However, the NCOPT President said that’s unlikely based on his information.

“That is one of our concerns,” he explained.

Ferdinand said the NCOPT hoped the survey would end in December and some recommendations implemented within the first two months of 2023.

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