A Cardiologist at the Department of Cardiology, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr Florence Koryo Akumiah, has warned that heart disease is quietly ravaging homes, echoing this year's World Heart Day theme: "Heart disease can hide in plain sight: Don't miss a beat".
At a health journalists' engagement to mark this year's World Heart Day organised by Communications Initiative for Change under its Meatless Monday programme, she said cardiovascular disease remained a major public health challenge, with the global toll now exceeding 20 million deaths from cardiovascular disease worldwide every year, 80 per cent of which came from risk factors that could be prevented or managed.
In Ghana, the numbers are sobering. The 2023 Ghana World Health Organisation (WHO) Stepwise Approach to Surveillance (STEPS) survey, which covered 5,438 adults across all 16 regions, found that about one in five adults had hypertension.
Dr Akumiah said that, from the survey, 21.7 per cent of adults aged 18-69, representing about 3.7 million people, had hypertension.
“The burden is heavier among women at 25.3 per cent compared to 18.2 per cent for men, and higher in urban areas at 23.4 per cent than rural areas at 19.1 per cent.”
Alarmingly, 8.4 per cent had severely raised BP of 160/100 or more at the time of measurement, with risk climbing sharply with age to 45.6 per cent in the 45-59 group and 55.3 per cent in the 60-69 group.
Dr Akumiah traced the problem to everyday habits captured in the Ghana STEPS 2023 report, where nine in 10 people add salt to food while cooking, and 23 per cent often eat salty processed food, 76 per cent eat fewer than five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, with fruit intake under one serving, and average leisure exercise is only 13 minutes a day, dropping to 4.5 minutes among women.
Gender gaps
She said the gender gaps were striking, revealing that beyond BP, 49.8 per cent of women were overweight or obese compared to 19.7 per cent of men; 22.6 per cent of women were obese as against 4.5 per cent of men, and 27.4 per cent had raised cholesterol compared to 16 per cent of men.
Also, she said 70 per cent have never had their blood sugar checked, and 90 per cent have never had a cholesterol check. For men, the problem was silent and unscreened, as one in three have never had BP checked, six in ten with high BP did not know it, and fewer than five in 100 had their high BP controlled.
Nutrition
The Programme Manager, Diet and Healthy Living Programme, Nutrition Department, Ghana Health Service (GHS), Catherine Adu-Asare, in a presentation on
“Nutrition and heart health: the role of healthy diets, physical activity and other lifestyle choices in the prevention of heart diseases”, said Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) remained the world's leading killer, and the burden fell heaviest on Low- and Middle-Income countries, including Ghana.
She said in Ghana, the risk profile was clear and presented as hypertension, excess weight, low intake of fruits and vegetables, and high salt exposure.
These, she said, were no longer distant threats but key drivers of heart disease affecting families and communities today, saying understanding this reality was the “first step to protecting our hearts”.
The good news, however, she said, was that “what we put on our plates can protect us” because a heart-healthy diet, as outlined in Ghana's Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (2023), was diverse, minimally processed, and rich in vegetables, fruits, legumes and nuts, with appropriate portions of other foods.
She commended the Meatless Monday initiative, which she said could be a helpful tool, but only when we get it right.
The Executive Director of CiC, Emmanuel Fiagbey, called on all to embrace the Meatless Monday initiative, saying it was the surest way that would help keep people healthy.
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