Cardiovascular Risk Factors in South-Western Nigeria: A WHO Step-Wise Approach

Abstract

Smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol consumption, as well as, poor diet such as high sugar consumption, which are unhealthy lifestyles, all constitute major risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, some of which can be controlled, treated or modified. This study was carried out to determine the prevalence of hypertension and obesity with the cardiovascular risk factors that Africans are largely exposed to, with a view to making necessary recommendations that would help improve them. This cross-sectional study was carried out in South-Western Nigeria. The target population were adults who are 30 years old or above. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the respondents. All data were statistically analyzed, using statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) and statistical test of significance was performed with Chi-Square test. A total of 438 consenting respondents participated in the study with a mean age ± SD of 39.74 ± 21.24 years. Among the subjects, 3.9% of the respondents were currently smoking at least one cigarette per day, 24.9% currently consume alcoholic drink, 19.6% consume snacks daily and a massive 70.5% don’t engage in any form of physical exercise. There is an unacceptable prevalence of controllable risk factors for cardiovascular diseases due to poor health-seeking behaviors and unhealthy lifestyle leading to poor health outcomes thus prompting the urgent need for sensitization & health promotion programmes on prevention and control measures, as well as an implementable national policy, to combat and stem the trend of these disorders in order to enhance life expectancy.