SA, Egypt lead Africa’s diabetes and obesity rates
The rates of both conditions are especially high in southern and northern Africa, led by South Africa and Egypt respectively.
Conducted by the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), in collaboration with Imperial College London, the research found that between 1980 and 2014 diabetes prevalence in African women increased from 4.1 percent to 8.9 percent. In men, prevalence of the disease increased from 3.1 to 8.5 percent in the same time-frame.
According to the study results, which were announced this week, this steep rise has been triggered by increasing rates of obesity across the continent.
“Our findings are based on the largest dataset ever collected describing these conditions in Africa. As the continent experiences higher burdens of obesity and diabetes, there is also a need to track performance of countries in preventing these conditions through better data,” said Dr James Bentham, from the Imperial College’s School of Public Health, in a statement.
Gender and regional differences
In men, the highest rates of diabetes and obesity were found in northern Africa, while, in women, southern Africa accounted for the highest levels.
Professor Andre Kenge, from the SAMRC, said that this “is the first detailed analysis of obesity and diabetes in Africa and shows a steady increase across the continent since 1980”.
Escalating diabetes rates in northern Africa have largely been attributed to inactive lifestyles and diet. But urbanisation and economic transitions to more affluent lifestyles, according to the study, are to blame for rising rates of both conditions in the southern part of the continent
Kenge said: “It highlights susceptibility determinants which are particular to Africans and will provide evidence that can be referenced when developing interventions in managing the dual burden of obesity and diabetes in Africa.” – Health-e News.
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.
SA, Egypt lead Africa’s diabetes and obesity rates
by Amy Green, Health-e News
June 8, 2017