RWANDA— The Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), in a new study dubbed “STEPS”, has noted that there was an increase from 14% in 2013 to 18.6% in 2022 of people deemed obese.
The “STEPS” study was done in the form of a household survey that gathered information on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) risk factors through a face-to-face interview, physical measurements, and biochemical analysis.
It used a sample population of 5,676 people aged between 18 and 69 years, from all four provinces of Rwanda.
Smoking, alcoholism, being overweight, physical inactivity, and eating behavior are some of the indicators that it focused on.
The problem of obesity, according to the study, is more prevalent in women than their male counterparts.
The RBC study illustrates that the number of overweight women increased from 19% in 2013 to 26% in 2022.
Subsequently, for men, a slight increase was recorded from 9% to 11.5% during the same period.
Dr. Francois Uwinkindi, the Manager of the Non-Communicable Diseases Division at RBC, said obesity is a risk factor for diabetes, hypertension, and heart diseases.
Dr. Uwinkindi noted that the numbers of obese people are not yet alarming, but they were unfortunately increasing.
Conversely, the study showed that the number of people doing sufficient physical exercise has increased by almost fivefold from 2013 to 2022.
In 2013, it was estimated that 21.4% of people in Rwanda were not doing enough physical activity, however, the numbers fell to 4.6% in 2022.
The study defines enough physical activity as more than 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity per week.
In a positive turn, the prevalence of tobacco smoking reduced from 12.9% in 2013 to 7.1% in 2022.
Additionally, also heavy, and episodic alcohol consumption also reduced from 23.5% in 2013 to 15.2% in 2022.
Uwinkindi called for collective efforts in combating NCDs risk factors, saying it cannot be done by the Ministry of Health alone.
“Many of the things we are talking about for example smoking, alcohol consumption, lack of enough physical exercise, obesity, and so on, actually don’t fall into the health ministry’s work alone. To fight NCDs, we are required to work collectively,” he noted.
The growing burden of NCDs in Rwanda needs behavior change approach
In Rwanda, heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases like asthma, and other non-infectious diseases accounted for 44 percent of all deaths in 2016, according to estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The Ministry of Health in Rwanda reports that the number of patients with heart diseases treated in Rwandan hospitals more than tripled between 2018 and 2020, from 25,353 to 88,486.
The Research Triangle Institute’s (RTI) Center for Global NCDs, notes that social and cultural norms along with individual experiences, perceptions, and attitudes play a significant role in the choices.
Moreover, people’s choices in their diet, physical activity, tobacco use, and alcohol use comprise the four primary behavioral risk factors for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).
The center recommends that communication interventions grounded in behavior change theories and tailored to a country’s sociocultural and policy context can substantially reduce these risk factors for NCDs and effectively improve the health of its population.
WHO calls for the prevention of NCD, where 82% of premature deaths from these diseases occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, by tackling the risk factors to save lives and it would also provide a huge boost to the economic development of countries.
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