Tackling cardiovascular disease in Africa

Will need much more than just imported measures from more developed countries I n the past four decades Africa has witnessed increasing urbanisation and changing lifestyles, factors which have, in turn, raised the incidence of non-communicable chronic diseases, especially cardiovascular disease. At the same time social disintegration and inequality, compounded by the dwindling economy in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, have seriously hindered the response to these non-communicable diseases. Moreover, communicable diseases are still rife, using up health resources, and actions to deal with communicable diseases have often been based on data from smaller studies, usually hospital based. The situation is cause for concern. Cardiovascular disease has reached near epidemic proportions in Africa. According to the World Health Report 2002 , cardiovascular disease accounted for 9.2% of total deaths in the African region in 2001, and hypertension, stroke, cardiomyopathies and …