Heart disease, cancer and diabetes are rising killers



The World Health Organisation’s latest report details NCD trends in countries as well as their responses.
“I see no lack of commitment; I see a lack of capacity to act, especially in the developing world,” says WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan. “Our latest data show that 85 percent of premature deaths from NCDs occur in developing countries.”
South Africans between the ages of 30 and 70 have almost double the risk of dying from an NCD as peers living in the United Kingdom.
NCDs are responsible for 44 percent of deaths nationwide. Heart disease is responsible for the bulk of these deaths followed by cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases.
A glance at South Africa’s health may explain why.
A third of South Africans between the ages of 30 and 70 years have high blood pressure and roughly the same proportion is obese. About 20 percent of South Africans smoke and the average person will consume about 10 litres of pure alcohol annually.
“With urbanisation and economic transitions in South Africa, more people are adopting a westernised lifestyle, with unhealthy diets commonly made up of energy-dense, highly processed foods that are high in salt, sugar and unhealthy fats,” said Jessica Byrne, registered dietitian with the Heart Stroke Foundation South Africa. “South Africans are becoming more sedentary, and these lifestyle risk factors contribute to the burden of NCD.”
She added the country’s love of salt is one of the leading causes of high blood pressure in the country. On average, South Africans consume more than twice the recommended amount of salt.
South Africa is one of over 190 governments that have agreed to a WHO global action plan to halt the epidemic and reduce premature deaths from NCDs by 25 percent by 2025.
Author
Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Heart disease, cancer and diabetes are rising killers
by wilmastassen, Health-e News
July 11, 2014
MOST READ
US funding freeze disrupts HIV, TB, and GBV support services
Healthcare coalition says NHI is “unfeasible”, proposes alternative route to universal health coverage
Kindness costs: The hidden sacrifices nurses make for patients with TB
EDITOR'S PICKS
Related


Patents could block access to breast cancer treatment for decades

Your genes could predict your future, but would you want them to?


Patents could block access to breast cancer treatment for decades
