High blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease remain three of the most significant health challenges facing the Middle East in 2005, despite ongoing work amongst doctors and community groups to raise awareness of the problem.
Experts argue that diseases like hypertension require ongoing public engagement activities, because the conditions themselves don’t necessarily generate sympathy and support among the community.
This is partly due to the fact that, in the early stages, the diseases spread without producing any ill feelings among suffers, and also because the patient group tend to be adults rather than children.
According to statistics from the UAE Ministry of Health, people older than 60 remain the largest group for heart-related deaths. However, studies also show that twenty percent of heart-related deaths in 2002 were residents in the 15 to 44 age group.
“As we examine the big health challenges for 2005, increasing awareness of the dangers of hypertension and heart disease has to be one of our top public health priorities,” said Dr. Hoda Mekkawi, a Family Medicine physician from the American Hospital - Dubai. “Residents need to be educated about the risks of heart disease and the importance of getting more exercise and trimming their diets.”
Among the highlights of an ongoing campaign to increase awareness of heart disease in the region was the recent visit of prominent Italian heart specialist, Dr. Aldo Maggioni, to the region, to support a number of “healthy heart” activities.
Other important developments in the fight against high blood pressure include the wider discussion among the region’s medical community of a number of breakthrough studies of hypertension and heart disease. The international Valsartan Antihypertensive Long-term Use Evaluation (VALUE), which compared two blood pressure medication-based treatments and examined their impact on high risk patients, was one such study.
