Chief Fire Officer Ditney Downes is urging men to take their health seriously, revealing that every COPD case the fire service responded to in 2025 were men. Downes shared the startling figures at a press conference this week outlining the massive volume of emergencies handled by fire service personnel.
According to the fire chief, the fire service responded to 13,170 ambulance calls last year. Additionally, 13,637 patient assessments were conducted including 6,925 medical calls, 3,994 hospital transfers and 2,245 trauma calls.
“Vehicle accident responses were 1,050 and respiratory responses were 843,” Downes stated.
He said that 95% of the fire service’s respiratory responses were linked to smoking-related diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – a disease that causes air flow limitation and breathing-related symptoms and is the third leading cause of death worldwide.
“I want to plead to our young men because the statistics showed that 100 % are males, so apparently, the females are doing something our males are not doing. COPD is not a joke. It’s a very serious disease,” the fire chief warned.
“So far [in 2026] we’ve responded to 6,762 ambulance calls [including 572] COPD cases. Based on that we’ve suspected that we will surpass the responses for 2025,” Downes told reporters.
With COPD on the rise, the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Nutrition recently launched a smoking deterrent campaign aimed at raising awareness on the severe health impacts of smoking.
“We find ourselves in Saint Lucia with the epidemic of illnesses like COPD and we really want to take a preventive step, especially saving our young persons from reaching that point where they have to hook up to some type of oxygen,” said Acting Deputy Coordinator of the Substance Abuse Advisory Council Secretariat in the Ministry of Health, Caleb Paul.
“It is really a matter of saving the next generation from these issues that someone would encounter through smoking,” Paul said earlier this year.