SLUM dwellers in Dhaka are at high risk of suffering from non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular ailments, referring to a study supported by the European Union. The study, released in the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh in Dhaka on Wednesday, also says that the prevalence of diabetes is 15.6 per cent in men and 22.5 per cent in women in slums, much higher than the estimated national prevalence of 7 per cent. The study says, 39.2 per cent women and 18.9 per cent men living in slums suffer from obesity while 21 per cent men and 7.1 per cent women are underweight. The occurrence of hypertension is 18.6 per cent among men and 20.7 per cent among women in slums.
The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh, estimated about 1,29,000 deaths in 2015 linked to diabetes. It is important to note that the lack of public awareness of diabetes in slums is having a negative impact on these people when, according to a 2015 study of the National Institute of Preventive and Social Medicine, 20.27 per cent urban people are overweight and 52.24 per cent are tobacco-users. Additionally, obesity entails the risk of diabetes 13 times as much as normal weight does. That more than a half of diabetes patients are not aware of the disease suggests that screening programme is still anything but satisfactory when it comes to slum people. As for hypertension, public health activists suggest that the social inequality and insufferable injustice that slum dwellers endure often result in hypertension, which in most cases leads to cardiovascular diseases. They, therefore, argue that a strictly treatment-oriented approach to control cardiovascular diseases may not bring the expected outcome unless prevention programmes are tied with economic development of slum people at the risk of non-communicable diseases. Cardiologists list tobacco use, sodium intake, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and air pollution as major causes of cardiovascular diseases. There is no denying that the risk factors are still rising in slums. It is, indeed, high time that the government seriously looked into the issues and overhauled its healthcare system with proper emphasis on effectively addressing concerns about the spread of non-communicable diseases in slums.
It needs, under the circumstances, to review its healthcare facilities and redesign its public health programme reckoning with the epidemiological shift towards diabetes, cardiovascular ailments and other non-communicable diseases, with a special focus on slum dwellers. As air pollution has been recognised as one of the major contributing factors, the health ministry must collaborate with the environment ministry to improve air quality.

More about: