Lifestyle risks for E Africans

The number of East Africans living with high blood pressure and diabetes is drastically increasing, says a World Health Organisation report released on Wednesday.It points out that though the trend is common to other developing and developed countries, it must not be taken for granted.The WHO’s World Health Statistics 2012 Report, includes data from 194 countries and has been released ahead of the World Health Assembly which begins in Geneva on Monday next week.It states that one in three adults worldwide has raised blood pressure and one in 10 suffers from diabetes. In its Africa survey, the report indicates that smoking, high alcohol intake and less physical activity is putting more men in East Africa in harms way“This report is further evidence of the dramatic increase in the conditions that trigger heart disease and other chronic illnesses, particularly in low-and middle-income countries,” the Director-General of WHO, Margaret Chan. “In some African countries, as much as half the adult population has high blood pressure.” An increase in obesity is also highlighted as a major health risk. In all parts of the world, women are likely to be more obese than men, making them more vulnerable to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers, yet in East Africa, more men die from heart diseases than women. “Women from the wealthier urban segment are more likely to be obese than their counterparts from the poorer urban category and from rural areas,” it says.It shows that, though infectious diseases such as HIV/Aids are the main killers in Kenya and Uganda, lifestyle illnesses are catching up.But East Africa is fighting back; by 2017, Rwanda expects to have a sufficient number of medical doctors deployed throughout the country. The number of visits by doctors from the USA, India and Egypt to the region, and to Rwanda in particular, has increased over the last few years.The government has announced plans to hire atleast 100 medical practitioners from top US Universities to train local medics as a way of brdging the capacity gap.Widespread diagnosisIn high-income countries, widespread diagnosis and treatment with low-cost medication have reduced mean blood pressure across populations, leading in turn to a reduction in deaths from heart disease. In Africa, however, more than 40 per cent of adults in many countries are estimated to have high blood pressure – most of them remain undiagnosed, even though many of these cases could be treated with low-cost medications, which would significantly reduce the risk of death. In the case of diabetes, the global average prevalence is around 10 per cent, with up to one third of populations in some Pacific Island countries having this condition. Left untreated, diabetes can lead to cardiovascular disease, blindness and kidney failure. “In every region of the world, obesity doubled between 1980 and 2008,” said the Director of the Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems at WHO, Ties Boerma. “Today, half a billion people – 12 per cent of the world’s population – are considered obese,” he says in a statement received by The New Times, yesterday.The highest obesity levels are in the Americas, with 26 per cent of adults suffering from obesity, and the lowest in the South-East Asian region, where only three per cent of the population is obese. According to WHO, non-communicable diseases currently cause almost two thirds of all deaths world-wide. Concern about the rise in the numbers of deaths from heart and lung disease, diabetes and cancer prompted the UN to hold a high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases in New York in September last year. Next weeks meeting is expected to review progresses made since that meeting and agree on the next steps.The so-called self-inflicted pain is seeing men die at a younger age than women, mostly before they reach age 60. It attributes to smoking, among other destructive habits. About 26 per cent of men smoke, compared to about two per cent women.Kenyan men smoke more than the average in the East Africa region, with more smokers now found in rural areas, where information about the dangers posed by the habit through leaflets and billboards are absent.The same case applies to alcohol; whereas consumption in the rest of the world has stabilised, it is on the rise in Africa.Other killer conditions in the East Africa region are chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma – common in the Great Lakes Region – lung cancer and apnea, which manifests itself in heavy snoring at night.The two most risky factors for chronic respiratory diseases, says the report, are tobacco smoking and the quality of air, with the numbers of men dying being twice the number of women.It also highlights the serious discrepancies in the region, pointing at the inequalities between the urban wealthiest and the poorest, which is worsening. It cites the case of drinking water as an example; access to safe drinking water has been worsening for almost all segments except the urban middle and upper class.

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Lifestyle risks for E Africans