Journal of Public Health Advance Access originally published online on June 28, 2005
Journal of Public Health 2005 27(3):309-310; doi:10.1093/pubmed/fdi041
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Correspondence |
Concerning: Prevalence and awareness of risk factors and behaviours of coronary heart disease in an urban population of Karachi
Richard Turner
Final Year Medical Student University of Birmingham Medical School Edgbaston B15 2TT richturner77{at}yahoo.com
Sirs, Dodani et al.1 report the prevalence and awareness of risk factors for coronary heart disease in Karachi. In 2004, I conducted structured interviews with a convenience sample of 82 adults in three locations around Quito, Ecuador. Like Pakistan, Ecuador is a developing country with an increasing trend towards urbanization. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are increasing in relative importance and now account for around 20 per cent of national mortality.2
I assessed participants’ socio-economic background and self-reported cardiovascular risk profile and asked each person, ‘What are the main causes of heart attacks? ’. Most respondents were from the urban, lower middle class. Twenty-two per cent of participants gave a history of high blood pressure, 8 per cent smoked more than one cigarette a day and 6 per cent had diabetes mellitus. This is a prevalence of hypertension very close to that reported by Dodani et al. in Karachi, whereas the prevalence of diabetes and smoking is lower in Quito.
Less than 65 per cent of participants in my sample could identify at least one cause of cardiovascular disease and less than 42 per cent identified more than one. Only 4 per cent of participants correctly named four or more correct causes. A diet high in fat was the most frequently mentioned significant risk factor, by 32 per cent. Smoking, hypertension and high cholesterol were identified by 20, 12 and 7 per cent, respectively. These findings are remarkably similar to the Karachi study.
The increasing global burden of cardiovascular diseases and populations’ widespread ignorance of them needs to be addressed.
Yours faithfully,
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References |
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- Dodani S, Mistry R, Khwaja A, Farooqi M, Qureshi R, Kazmi K. Prevalence and awareness of risk factors and behaviours of coronary heart disease in an urban population of Karachi, the largest city of Pakistan: a community survey. J Publ Hlth 2004; 26: 245–249.
- IISE. Sistema Integrado de Indicadores Sociales del Ecuador 2002, Versión 3.5. Quito: SIISE, 2002.
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