Tonight, in the wake of ASP Yearwood's death, Dr Cuellar said he felt compelled to give a warning to those who may be suffering under similar circumstances to let them know that there are certain lifestyle changes that could possibly save their lives.
Dr. Fernando Cuellar, Medical Doctor
"It's our duty as caregivers as physicians to try to enlighten and try to make aware of all these health conditions that is affecting our population so much - preventable conditions, because one, you will always find out from the family if there is a pre-disposition if somebody in the family had a stroke, it is always important to ask these questions and the two major conditions that contribute to strokes are high blood pressure and diabetes. Of course, you have other ones like Obesity, like high cholesterol, those are the things but the two biggest ones are high blood pressure and diabetes."
Cherisse Halsall:
"But the way you are describing that it seems like many Belizeans are creating the perfect cocktail for a stroke?"
Dr. Fernando Cuellar, Medical Doctor
"That is a good word to use there, cocktail recipe for stroke that the ethnicity even plays a role - black versus Latin versus other ethnicities, the presence of the high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, obese, exercise - all of these thing and stroke not only take a toll on the person itself, but it affects the family greatly to care for a person who has had a stroke is extremely expensive, extremely time demanding. I've seen many families disintegrate, because the bread winner gets the stroke and then worse things happens to that family."
"I want to highlight that its by and large preventable. You get your early check-ups or twice a year, check your blood pressure, check your sugar - make sure these things are in order and I would want to ask Mr. Chester, my good friend, to please let us star to screen the police more in depth and all the public officers for that matter. Private companies can incorporate that in the way they assess. I know for example one of the utility companies, they include that in their yearly assessment, if you do your yearly check-up. If you don't do your yearly check-up, you won't get your increment or increase, for example and we need to have it as a public enemy number one, so that we can deal with these matter of stroke and heart attacks and those non-communicable disease like we call them."
