Thato Chwaane
6 March 2008
By 2020, heart disease and stroke will become the leading cause of both death and disability worldwide, Dr Caroline Akim who was representing the WHO Representative has said.
Akim was speaking at the Heart Foundation of Botswana, the second such foundation in southern Africa.
She said the old stereotype that cardiovascular diseases only affect stressed, overweight middle aged men in developed countries no longer applies. Instead, she said that men, women and children are at risk and 80 percent of the burden is in low and middle income countries.
Akim said that heart disease and stroke not only take lives, but also are a cause of enormous economic burden.
She said that by 2015, almost 20 million people will die from cardiovascular diseases, mainly from heart disease and stroke.
Akim noted that the contributing factors of heart disease and stroke are obesity, poor diet, smoking and physical inactivity that are now being seen at an alarmingly early age.
She said not many countries in Africa give non-communicable diseases the priority they deserve although they are a serious threat to the health of adult Africans. She said hypertension in Africa is a widespread problem of immense economic importance because of its high prevalence in urban areas, its frequent under diagnosis and the severity of its complications.
Akim acknowledged that decision makers and government funding agencies neglect the public health issues of heart disease and stroke even though they are preventable.
The Heart Foundation of Botswana was launched this week to help raise education awareness about heart disease. Professor Kiran Bhagat said young people suffer strokes when they should not and they are paraplegic because many are not aware of heart diseases.
He said this is an important subject, not a sexy subject like HIV. Bhagat said the foundation, a non-profit company under Cardiac Clinic, would not be sending people for operations in the hope that people would be made more aware. He said that Botswana was sitting on an epidemic.
Bhagat said that the Minister of Health, Sheila Tlou is about to set up a department of non-communicable disease.
The Heart Foundation of Botswana coordinator, Lindsey Jones said that the cost of heart disease in the United States was US $258 billion in 2006 and this included loss of productivity, costs in health care services and medication.
She said that the foundation was set up because there was too much focus on certain diseases and because research was urgently required in Botswana.
Jones said that currently there were no statistics that exist on heart disease in Botswana.
She said they will engage in a unified gathering of statistics.
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