Partnerships, Strong Healthcare Necessary to Fight Hypertension in Africa – AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company, has called for public-private partnerships and strong healthcare systems to combat cardiovascular diseases in Africa.
Senior Director of Corporate Affairs for the Middle East and Africa Region at AstraZeneca, Qutaiba Al Manaseer, made the call during a webinar organised to celebrate nine years of impact in the fight against hypertension through the Healthy Heart Africa (HHA) programme.
The webinar was also held to mark the World Heart Day.
Healthy Heart Africa is an initiative of AstraZeneca, being implemented across Africa in collaboration with African governments and non-governmental organisations.
Manaseer said the programme had helped to decrease the burden of cardiovascular diseases and non-communicable diseases in Africa.
He said according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), hypertension affects one in three adults worldwide and Africa has the highest prevalence of hypertension in any region.
Manaseer said the number of adults suffering from high blood pressure in sub-Saharan Africa was also projected to reach 216.8 million by 2030.
He added that in 2019, more than one million deaths were due to cardiovascular diseases in sub-Saharan Africa, which constituted 5.4 per cent of all global CVD-related deaths and 13 per cent of all deaths in Africa.
On what HHA had done since its inception in 2014, Manaseer said the programme had conducted over 38.5 million blood pressure screenings and diagnosed over 3.1 million people.
“We have trained over 10,600 healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, community health volunteers and pharmacists to provide education, awareness, screening and treatment services.
“Also, we have activated over 1,300 healthcare facilities to provide hypertension services.
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“Healthy Heart Africa has demonstrated the power of public-private partnerships in delivering sustainable solutions that strengthen the resilience of local health systems.
“We will continue collaborating with stakeholders to tackle the silent killer hypertension and improve patient outcomes,” Manaseer said.
Interim Country President, AstraZeneca in African Cluster, Mr. Deepak Arora, said transforming the lives of patients, and ensuring people in Africa had access to innovative medicines was of major importance to them.
He noted that through the HHA, they would continue to Invest in medical education and knowledge sharing by ensuring healthcare professionals have access to information to make the best treatment decisions.
Dr. Yvette Kisaka, in charge of the Programmes, Division of NCD Prevention and Control, Ministry of Health Kenya said, “We need to strengthen health systems to achieve Universal Health Coverage, as envisioned by Sustainable Development Goal three on good health and wellbeing.
Kisaka explained that HHA supported local health system resilience by addressing the barriers that prevented access to care by increasing awareness of the symptoms and risks of hypertension.
Meanwhile, the Programme Officer, National Primary Health Care Development Agency in Nigeria, Dr. Suleiman Lamorde, lauded the HHA programme for the support it has extended in combating hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases in Nigeria.
Speaking on the challenges of primary health care centres in Nigeria, Lamorde said the major issue was the shortage of human resources for health.
He noted that they had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with states across the country to recruit more health workers and also engaged the School of Health Technology and School of Nursing.
HHA started in Kenya in 2014 and subsequently expanded to Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Rwanda, Nigeria and Zanzibar.
