AFRICA NOT PREPARED TO DEAL WITH NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES SAYS DR CATHERINE KYOBUTUNGI

Clive Ayuko Nairobi, Kenya 24th May 2023 According to the Book Africa Tommorrow Pathways to Prosperity by the Researcher and co-founder of Institute for Security Studies ISS Jackie Cillers; when a country makes the transition from developing to become developed it is characterized by improved food security, and Innovations in public health and medicine and as a result communicable diseases such as Influenza are normally replaced by Chronic conditions such as Cancer, diabetes and various other lifestyle diseases. Termed the epidemiological transition this period is characterized by switch from death in childhood as a result of infectious or communicable diseases to death in old age as a result of non-communicable diseases and lifestyle diseases typical of sedentary population cohorts due largely to consumption of processed food as a result of increased incomes. In Europe and North America this transition happened about 100 years ago, for the Caribbean and Latin America states this transition occured in the 1970’s, North Africa counties to include Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia this happened in 1980’s, South Asia in the year 2000 and it is predicted the transition for Sub-Saharan Africa this is set to happen in 2030. While responding to a question on if Africa is prepared to deal with proliferation of Non Communicable disease burden in the future on the sidelines of the 20th Anniversary Celebrations of the Africa Population Research Centre (APHRC) held at the Institutions Headquarters in Kitisuru Nairobi Executive director of the Institute Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi had this to say, ” I think we are the first Institute in the country to do research on Non-communicable diseases and in 2010 we found out that 25% of adults in the informal settlements had hypertension with a further 5% suffering from diabetes and the worst thing was that for instance if you took 100 people who had hypertension only one of them was controlled and the reason was that almost 80% of them were unaware and those who were aware were not on treatment and those on treatment it was not effective. She went on to add, ” so if you take 100 people with hypertension or high blood pressure only one of them was well controlled. What this means is that if you do not control high blood pressure then 10 years from now we are looking at Kidney failure, strokes and heart attacks. The burden of non communicable diseases is large so whether it’s 10 years from now or 5 years from now we can already see that the cancer burden is rising. I don’t think we are prepared for that whether in terms of policy of actions or programs. We are still stuck in the infectious diseases is still a big problems kind of mindset and our systems are set up that way. “More importantly”, she Continued; “What are we doing to stop the pipeline of those people before the get hypertension and if they do get hypertension to stop them from getting strokes 10 years from now. So I don’t think we are doing enough. There have been some changes and initiatives but I think the attention that Kenya or Africa is paying non-communicable diseases of not commensurate with the existing burden or future burden.”

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