Non-Communicable Disease

 Non-Communicable Disease

Noncommunicable diseases: tend to be of long duration and are the result of a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental and behavioural factors.  

Types of Noncommunicable Diseases:

• Cardiovascular Disease (Heart attack and stroke), 
• Cancer
• Chronic respiratory diseases (such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma) 
• Diabetes

Chronic Diseases: conditions that last over a year and require ongoing medical attention and/or limit activities of daily living.

Noncommunicable diseases are rising substantially, placing a significant strain on health systems which will result in catastrophically high healthcare expenditures in the future.5 The greatest contributor to non communicable diseases in recent times is our sedentary lifestyles that has significantly increased especially over the course of the COVID19 pandemic. Work, school and gym closures have forced people to stay at home decreasing their physical activity levels. Sedentary behaviour refers to physical inactivity such as prolonged sitting and lying down or activities that require little to no energy. Rapid urbanization, affluence and globalization are strong contributors to physical inactivity and sedentary lifestyles, especially in Ghana.

A sedentary lifestyle, that is free of physical activity, is destructive to health and wellbeing. This is the case because physical activity facilitates disease prevention, especially for Type 2 diabetes and Cardiovascular disease, which are the two main types of noncommunicable diseases.

Quite often, noncommunicable diseases are overlooked and ignored as they are diseases that do not spread from person to person and develop overtime, sometimes without symptoms. In Ghana, there is a dominant assumption amongst lay and expert groups that chronic diseases are rare and do not pose a big public health threat. This incorrect notion undermines the high prevalence of noncommunicable diseases in Ghana. In fact, noncommunicable diseases require just as much or perhaps even more attention than communicable diseases because they are significant public health problems that can have damaging and deadly implications on individuals’ health and health systems as a whole. Thus, chronic and noncommunicable diseases, which are very much public health and developmental issues, do in fact require the same intellectual and financial commitments and resources as communicable diseases such as Malaria and HIV.

Take a look at these staggering statistics: 

• A non-communicable disease survey conducted in 1998 recorded a national prevalence of 27.8% for hypertension.
• At Korle-Bu hospital, the percentage of medical admissions due to diabetes increased almost two-fold from 3.5 in the mid-1970s to 6.4% in the mid-1980s.