Ghana is recording more cases of stroke among young people of 40 years and below, the acting Programme Manager of the Non-Communicable Diseases of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Efua Commeh, has revealed.
The stroke cases, she said, were triggered by
uncontrolled hypertension that had become common in young people in the country
recently.
Dr Commeh said although stroke cases were
previously recorded mainly in people between 80 and 90 years old, local
hospitals were now recording them in people as young as 35 years and
40-year-olds, most of them resulting from uncontrolled hypertension.
“These strokes that originally we used to see
in very aged people are now occurring in the productive work group; people who
are actively working,” she said.
“They bring them to the hospital and they say
nothing happened and the person collapsed. You check them and they have
hypertension. It is this hypertension that gives them complications like
stroke, heart attacks, kidney diseases, among others,” she added.
Describing hypertension as a very serious
health problem in the country now, Dr Commeh said the hospitals kept seeing
more young people, sometimes in their 20s, reporting to health facilities with
hypertension, adding, however, that those numbers were not as huge as the older
age groups.
She said averagely, the country recorded
around 600,000 cases of hospital visits every year by people with hypertension.
She was speaking in an interview ahead of
World Hypertension Day that will be observed on May 17, on the theme: “Measure
Your Blood Pressure Accurately, Control It, Live Longer”.
Stroke causes
Dr Commeh said stress was chiefly responsible
for the recent stroke cases among young people in the country, adding that most
young people in Ghana were stressed out.
“(For) Some of them, it is pressure from
school, pressure from work, pressure from the home and pressure everywhere; and
on top of these stresses, closing quite late from work and getting home late
before eating in the night.
At that time of the night, you are not going
to get any appropriate food to eat.
You end up taking fast foods, and these,
among others, contribute to make us unhealthy, and they are the things that can
give us hypertension,” she explained.
She said unhealthy diets, cigarette smoking,
alcohol use and physical inactivity or the lack of exercises were other causes
of stroke among young people, pointing out that such conditions were
contributory factors that raised blood pressure which could develop into
hypertension.
“Hypertension is said to be a silent killer.
It is called silent because when it starts
rising, you don’t notice anything.
The first thing you know is you have severe
headache and then the person collapses, and by that time, it would have gotten
a bit too late,” she said
Unfortunately, she said, most people in the
country, including young people, hardly checked their blood pressure, adding
that for most people, the first time their blood pressure was checked was after
they had collapsed and they had been rushed to hospital.
Preventing hypertension
Dr Commeh advised young people to have enough
rest, pay attention to their diet and reduce fried foods, fats and oils, as
well as salts and sugars to avoid getting hypertension.
She also recommended that they should take
small walks in and around their offices after sitting behind their desks for
two hours, climb office stairs once or twice a day, and eat more fruits and
vegetables.
She urged corporate organisations to
undertake proper medical screening for their staff at least once a year.
“Test for fats, blood sugar, urine function,
blood pressure.
That routine screening will help us so that
if there is something going wrong, it can easily be picked up and managed,” she
said.
She advised young people already diagnosed
with diabetes and hypertension to take their medication, explaining that
hypertension and diabetes could result in problems, including erectile
dysfunction and reproductive problems, when left uncontrolled.
Dr Commeh advised the public to walk to a
pharmacy or any clinic to regularly have their blood pressure checked, at least
once a month, and to get conditions controlled if they were diagnosed with any,
in order that they might live healthier and longer.
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