Ministry Integrates Non-Communicable Diseases Into Primary Healthcare

The Rivers State Ministry of Health has mapped out strategies to integrate non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and Arian Influenza into primary health care services in other to prevent, control and provide management guidelines for major NCDs, and their complications to patients in the various primary health care centers.

The Desk Officer, Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) Rivers State Ministry of Health, Dr Victor Abikor, stated this while delivering a lecture on the “Overview of NCDs in Nigeria, “at the conference room of the ministry, Tuesday.

Dr Abikor stated that the goal of the NCD is to reduce morbidity and mortality resulting from NCDs and to reverse the increasing prevalence of NCDs by 20 percent by 2015.

He disclosed that hypertension, coronary disease and diabetes has common risk factors which include obesity, alcohol, physical inability and smoking.

Others, according to him, are life style, advancing age and socio-economic status.

According to Dr Abikor, 44% of all deaths in the north from 1996 to 2001 occur as a result of NCDs, while 11.2% of Nigerians above 15 years are hypertensive.

“Nigeria health landscape is rapidly changing from communicable to non communicable diseases from and major NCDs in Nigeria including hypertension, diabetes mellitus, sickle cell disease, cancer, stroke, asthma, tobacco related diseases’, he outlined.

On her part, Dr Roseline O. Appah Dulu, State Epidemiologist, Rivers State Ministry of Health who defines hypertension as a condition in which the blood pressure measured is higher than normal, said it may be mild, moderate or servere.

On how to recognise symptoms, she said hypertension does not reveal itself by way of symptoms but in few individuals it may be present with occasional throbbing headaches, unclear or hazy vision and occasional awareness of the heart beating (palpitation).

As part of effort to check hypertension, Appah Dulu advised patients to detect it early by going for regular medical checks to reduce pressure to normal and maintain it within the normal range as well as preventing and treating complications of hypertension.