How to reduce cardiovascular disease, sudden deaths – Hospital

The Chief Medical Director, Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido Ekiti, Prof. Adekunle Ajayi, has canvassed improved funding for the nation’s health system to meet the training, research, infrastructures and other material needs for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease.…CONTINUE READING

Ajayi, a professor of Medicine, said research had shown that CVD “is the largest contributor to disease burden and most common of premature death as well as responsible for one in three deaths globally.”

He advised that physicians “should promptly identify individuals at risk of CVD as well as help patients overcome barriers to improving cardiovascular health by adequately counselling patients regarding the severity of the disease and the need for adequate adherence to prescribed medications and increase treatment intensity as needed.”

Ajayi who spoke at an inaugural lecture, titled, “Low risk, not no risk’: The travails of a lifetime pump fighting fate,” which he delivered at the Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti, also advised professional associations in cardiovascular medicine to provide simplified screening and management algorithms for those at risk of CVD.

Ajayi, who said that the heart cum the vascular system was central to life and healthy living said that “The older we get, the higher the risk and the more the number of individual risk factors the higher the risk as well.

Ajayi advised against smoking and exposure to tobacco; unhealthy diets; physical inactivity; and unchecked obesity among others.

He said, “The expert also said people should “reduce their body mass index (to less than 25kg/m2) and waist-hip ratio (to less than 0.8 in women and 0.9 in men); lower their blood pressure (to less than 140/90mmHg); lower their blood cholesterol (to less than 5mmol/1 or mg/dI) among others.”