Africa-Press – Mauritius. The latest Mauritius Non-communicable Disease (NCD) survey, whose main objective is to determine the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and their associated risk factors in the Mauritian population, will kick off on Saturday 23 October 2021.
The Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Kailesh Kumar Singh Jagutpal, made the announcement, this morning, at the launching of a two-day training workshop for NCD Survey staff at Heen Foh Hall in Port-Louis.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) Representative, Dr Laurent Musango; the Professor Emeritus of Public Health from the University of Helsinki in Finland, Professor Jaakko Tuomilehto; the Consultant Cardiology from the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine of Umea University in Sweden, Professor Stefan Soderberg; and other personalities were present at the event.
In his address, Dr Jagutpal stated that the NCD survey could reshape the public health priority areas as the information collected will enable the elaboration of appropriate intervention strategies, the improvement of disease control and the evaluation of the effectiveness of interventional measures.
The Minister urged the survey staff to seize the opportunity to establish a bond of trust with the population. He recalled that the Health Sector Strategy 2020 – 2024 outlines that patients should become partners in health.
For his part, Professor Jaakko Tuomilehto emphasised that Mauritius is one of the five countries in the world which carry out such a key health survey with capability, skills and knowledge, every five years.
He dwelt on the importance of using international validated methodology and measurements in the survey, and of recording data with care. The necessity to share the information with the public, especially when the results are abnormal, was also highlighted.
The Professor added that the main results should be made available publicly both in Mauritius and at international level in order to provide the knowledge globally and improve human health.
Surveys undertaken in Mauritius on the burden of the key NCDs and their risk factors were carried out in 1987, 1992, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2015 with the collaboration of Monash University and the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia, the University of Helsinki in Finland, Umea University Hospital in Sweden and Imperial College in the United Kingdom.
A total of 4,300 Mauritians aged between 20 to 74 years old have been randomly selected by Statistics Mauritius and the Statistics Department of the Minister of Health and Wellness to participate in the upcoming exercise. They will be grouped in 15 clusters around the island. Some new features have been added to the survey.
They include electrocardiogram of participants above 35 years old, a study on sleep apnoea, the use of neck circumference measurement to obtain a precise index of upper body fat distribution, the retinal screening of participants with diabetes, the hand grip measurement which is a marker of diabetes and hypertension, and pulse wave velocity which is an indicator for artery performance.
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