Corporate News
It is estimated that by 2030, chronic pulmonary diseases will be the
leading killers worldwide and villagers practise just about every
lifestyle that encourages the illnesses. GRAPHIC | MILLICENT WACHIRA
By DIANA MWANGO
In Summary
There was a time when what was known of Kenya’s
villages was malaria, hunger and infant deaths. The rural households
were too poor to afford cigarettes, too hungry and hard-working to be
overweight.
But now, on arrival in the mud-and-thatch villages,
settlements with no running water and electricity, you would never guess
that thousands of the farmers and livestock keepers who live there die
from chronic diseases associated with a far opulent Western lifestyle,
says Prof Gerald Yonga, the Kenya Cardiac Society national chair.
Westernisation in the rural areas is leaving a
trail of obesity, heart diseases, diabetes, kidney failure,
hypertension, cancer and deadly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
(COPD); illnesses that don’t even have names in vernacular languages.
Men with carts sell sausages and home-made
ice-creams sachets in trading centres. At lunchtime, young children line
up to buy hot potato chips made over smoky fires, wrapped in small
polythene bags.
"Traditional staples such as maize, vegetables and
the occasional meat or fish that were previously steamed or boiled are
now fried in saturated fat. Meals once seasoned with herbs are now
heavily salted. People eat more meat, potato chips have arrived in rural
shops and children are clamouring for soda," said Prof Yonga, a
consultant cardiologist at Aga Khan University Hospital.
Unhealthy diets, inadequate physical activity,
smoking and excessive alcohol intake have pushed up the numbers of
Kenyans with obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and
diabetes, and the villages tucked in forests or rocks, as if shielded
from affluence, are now feeling the growing pains of globalisation.
A real problem Prof Yonga says is that more and
more women in rural areas are growing overweight. The irony is that
Kenya has high levels of malnutrition and rising numbers of obese
people.
Obesity weighs down on body joints and combined
with lack of physical activity, puts people at risk of getting
arthritis, heart diseases, hypertension, diabetes, cancer and
obstructive lung diseases.
High blood pressure has also not spared the poor
households. According to AstraZeneca, a biopharmaceutical company, about
44.5 per cent of Kenyan adults have raised blood pressure, which is one
of the highest prevalence rates across Africa. These hypertensive
patients are staring at damaged hearts, arteries, brains, kidneys, eyes
and sexual dysfunction.
Healthy Heart Africa, a programme launched in
October last year by the UK pharmaceutical targets to train low-income
populations, at-risk adults over 35 years in Kajiado, Murang’a, Nyeri,
and Nairobi on hypertension risk factors and healthy behaviours.
Physical inactivity is no longer only a problem of
the affluent. Boda bodas race through the villages picking commuters to
markets, dispensaries or churches. Most rural dwellers do not have to
walk far, reducing their physical activity to bare minimum.
Nicotine- laden
In emerging towns, high-rise buildings are coming
up, crowding the towns. "There is less space for walking. And even if
you wanted to walk, there is fear of insecurity or being knocked down,"
Prof Yonga says.
Smoking is a big problem in rural areas. ‘‘They
(rural dwellers) may not buy the Cuban cigars, the shisha or expensive
cigarette brands. But they buy the cheap poor quality nicotine-laden
filter-less cigarettes. Some of them farm the tobacco in a garden patch
behind their huts. They dry it on the roof top and then roll it,’’ says
Dr Peter Munyu, a pulmonary specialist at the doctor at Aga Khan
University Hospital.
Of concern to Dr Munyu is COPD, a life-threatening
lung disease projected to be the third leading killer by 2030 worldwide.
The disease, a persistent inflammation of the lungs’ airways, is most
often caused by tobacco smoke or exposure to stove smoke.
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