Dar es Salaam. Contrary to popular belief, lifestyle diseases are today claiming more lives in poor countries, including Tanzania, than in the rich world with relatively young people being among victims of heart disorders, cancer, diabetes and stroke.The incidence in the country of non-communicable diseases (NDCs), which experts say can be easily contained, is alarming and the World Health Organisation (WHO) says the illnesses are now among the top causes of death.
Communicable diseases such as HIV/Aids and malaria, nutritional deficiencies and maternal and perinatal conditions will soon be no longer the leading killers in Tanzania. Instead, it will be NCDs, which currently cause 63 per cent of all deaths worldwide. Lifestyle diseases will be killing 55 million people annually by 2030.
In its latest World Health Statistics report, WHO shows that the probability of dying from an NCD in Tanzania for those aged between 30 and 70 is 30-40 per cent. It adds that out of the 100,000 people dying in the country, 745 are victims of NCDs compared to 782 deaths caused by communicable diseases and 120 from injuries.
The UN health agency estimates that 80 per cent of all chronic diseases in the world occur in low and middle-income countries.On Friday, the head of WHO in Tanzania, Dr Rufaro Chatora, said people in the poorest parts of the world die of NCDs at far younger ages than in developed countries, adding that there was an urgent need to reverse the trend, which is “very easy and costs very little”.
“In developing countries, we tend to get these diseases perhaps at a younger age because when we get exposed to the risk factors, we do it at a younger age – eating refined sugars and excess fats, drinking a lot and lacking exercise,” he noted in an exclusive interview
He said that apart from limited capacity to deal with NCDs, it was also expensive to treat them. However, the conditions are relatively simple and cheap to prevent.
“For example, encouraging people to regularly undertake physical exercise is one way. It helps and you don’t spend anything to do physical exercises. You just run like three times around your house block every day. Another good measure is proper diet. You don’t have to spend too much money to advise people on that,” he noted.
Dr Chatora also said the government should put in place legislation that would compel those who produce foods to ensure that they don’t put sugar, salt and other ingredients beyond a certain limit. People should also stop eating sweets, cakes and such things at an early age and habits like smoking and excessive drinking should be avoided.
“Simple measures like these would greatly reduce the level of increase of NCDs in many countries. These are the measures developed countries take to contain NCDs.“Tanzania is currently undertaking, with WHO support, surveys on the prevalence or level of risk factors (of NCDs). The results of this survey will help the country to develop appropriate interventions focusing on prevention as well as treatment,” Dr Chatora said.
The WHO report says most NCD deaths are caused by heart diseases (48 per cent) followed by cancers (21 per cent) and chronic respiratory diseases like asthma (12 per cent). Of the nearly 36 million people killed by NCDs in 2008 worldwide, 3.5 million succumbed to diabetes.
It is estimated that behavioural risk factors, including tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet and harmful use of mostly hard beverages, are responsible for 80 per cent of coronary heart and cerebrovascular diseases. Medical experts say that the largest part of the main chronic diseases can be prevented if behavioural risk factors, which lead to biological factors before one suffers from lifestyle problems such as high blood pressure and sugar, and high blood cholesterol, are properly contained.
The WHO report warns of obesity contributing to many NDC complications.
“In every region of the world, obesity doubled between 1980 and 2008,” says Dr Ties Boerma, the WHO director of the Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems. “Today, half a billion people (12 per cent of the world’s population) are considered obese.”
To make matters worse in Tanzania, the extent of the NDCs problem is still unknown. And instead of using the most optimal approach to tame the endemic situation, the government currently focuses on treatment of individual NCDs.
Medical and health experts say the preferable approach to deal with the matter is to focus on prevention because it is much cheaper in the long run. The Citizen on Saturday has, however, reliably learnt that it was only recently that the government came up with a policy statement on fighting the diseases.
Doctors said they are not only concerned about the rate at which the NCDs are escalating in the country, but are also worried because the national health system is currently ill-equipped to deal with them.
According to Dr Pashal Ruggajo of Muhimbili National Hospital, it is high time more effort was put into research and specialised personnel training on NCDs in the country. He also called for mass education on healthy lifestyles as a measure to curb the NCDs threat.
Credit To The Citizen.
This post was written by: Author Name
Your description comes here!
Get Free Email Updates to your Inbox!
