This year {2025} marks the end of the first quarter of the Millenium. The World Health Organization’s Millenium Development Goals {MDGs}, targeted to be achieved by 2015, were not met, and still pose considerable challenge to the healthcare professions. Whilst infectious diseases are major problems in developing countries including ours, non-communicable diseases – referred to as the 21st Century Epidemic= are still on the rise. It was estimated in 2009 that 35 million people worldwide die annually from NCDs like cardiovascular diseases, chronic lung diseases, lung cancer and other types of cancer and Type 2 diabetes. A report from 2023 asserts that NCDs are responsible for 74 per cent of all deaths and disabilities globally, killing 41 million people annually.
NCDs remain a Sustainable Development Goal Experts say 80 per cent of NCDs are preventable; that NCDs are caused by modifiable risk factors like tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, harmful alcohol consumption. Since NCDs commonly affect low -and middle-income communities {which presumably lack adequate health education], General Practitioners can play a crucial role in educating these communities about the financial and emotional burden of NCDs, means of prevention, avenues to get help with healthcare.
An added challenge in poor communities is the common practice of adulteration of food. This practice is fife in our country, and is nigh unstoppable, given that a large majority of the public will look for the cheapest commodities.
It is a big undertaking for our GPs who, being the closest healthcare provider to the community at large, to provide healthcare, give health education and perhaps lead the community in setting up home-grown food initiatives.
