Risk factors for heart diseases, diabetes among Egyptians identified

CAIRO - 22 July 2018: The results of health statistics conducted by the Ministry of Health in 2017 indicated that 90.1 percent of Egyptians do not eat healthy food and consume less than five meals per day. In addition, 79.1 percent of the population do not exercise and 35.7 percent suffer from obesity.

The goal of such statistics is to determine the risk factors that cause heart diseases and diabetes which constitute the main reasons behind deaths in the country. Those include smoking, malnutrition, alcohol consumption, and lack of physical activity.

The statistics also revealed that 22 percent of Egyptians are smokers. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 7 million deaths occur each year because of smoking, almost 1 million of which are second-hand smokers.

“Around 80 percent of the 1.1 billion smokers worldwide live in low- and middle-income countries, where the burden of tobacco-related illness and death is heaviest,” the WHO indicates. That is because tobacco users, who die before reaching old age, “deprive their families of income, raise the cost of healthcare and hinder economic development.”

Tobacco contains 4,000 chemicals, 50 of which are carcinogenic and 250 are known to be harmful.

“In adults, second-hand smoke causes serious cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, including coronary heart disease and lung cancer. In infants, it causes sudden death. In pregnant women, it causes low birth weight. Almost half of children regularly breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke in public places,” WHO clarifies.

Those results were announced in a conference where Associate Chairman of the Specialized Medical Centers Mohamed Gad declared that the Ministry of Health uses such statistics to improve the health care system in Egypt, and achieve the WHO Global Targets 2025.

The WHO Global Targets 2025 are:
1) Reducing the number of children suffering from stunting (not growing properly due to malnutrition) by 40 percent.
2) Reducing anaemia in women of reproductive age by 50 percent.
3) Reducing low birth weight by 30 percent.
4) Halting the increase in childhood overweight.
5) Increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first 6 months up to at least 50 percent.
6) Reducing and maintaining childhood wasting (acute malnutrition over a short period of time) to less than 5 percent.