TRAINERS training on Healthy Heart Africa Programme (HHA) to battle the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Africa has begun in earnest in the Horn Africa nation of Ethiopia.
The pro-poor HHA Programme, which has already recorded notable success in improving hypertension care in Kenya, is committed to reaching 10 million hypertensive patients across the continent by 2025.
Ethiopia’s ministry of health in collaboration with AstraZeneca, a global pharmaceuticals company, have held trainers training to spearhead hypertension and diabetes awareness programme. The training comes in the framework of the HHA Programme that the Ministry of Health AstraZeneca launched a couple of weeks ago aiming to address hypertension and diabetes.
The duo are now taking the next step with the Healthy Heart Africa Programme and hosting the Train the Trainer Workshop for 26 healthcare professionals in Adama town of Oromia Region. The Ethiopian government is hosting the training with expert trainers from the Cardiology Society focusing on hypertension and diabetes.
The objective of the one-week training workshop is to prepare health professionals to kick start the HHA Programme which was launched in Ethiopia on June 23 with the Ministry of Health and AstraZeneca being the key partners in the programme.
The programme was launched to tackle hypertension in the framework of the government’s Strategy for combating NCDs. The project’s expansion into Ethiopia follows the success story of a series of Kenyan demonstration projects launched in October 2014. Since then, AstraZeneca, in collaboration with the Kenyan Ministry of Health and non-governmental partners, has screened over one million Kenyans for hypertension and identified over 150,000 Kenyans living with the condition.
Building on the momentum of these Kenyan successes, AstraZeneca alongside the Ethiopian government will tailor Healthy Heart Africa’s comprehensive, three-pillared framework to the local Ethiopian context.
Through this, the programme will help the Ministry of Health decentralise and scale up high quality hypertension care and treatment. Hypertension or high blood pressure is known as a silent killer because, even though it does not present symptoms, it contributes to the development of cardiovascular disease which accounts for approximately 17 million deaths a year globally, making it the biggest cause of death worldwide.
Hypertension causes 7.5 million deaths annually (12.8 per cent of all deaths) and the risk of dying from hypertension in African countries is more than double that in high-income countries. Ethiopia is focusing on tackling hypertension as a key contributor to the burden of NCDs in the country.
To strengthen nationwide awareness, prevention, control and treatment of hypertension, the Ministry of health signed an agreement with AstraZeneca to provide a formal partnership framework paving the way for the launch and implementation of the HHA Programme, which is structured around three key pillars:
• Education and Awareness about hypertension as a condition that is preventable, easily identified and treatable.
• Increasing awareness among healthcare workers to optimise performance and to drive hypertension care to lower levels of the Healthcare System
• Facilitating conditions for easier and more accessible diagnosis so that people can prevent and control the disease before it leads to complications. During the launch ceremony of the programme, the Ethiopian Minister of Health, Dr Kesetebirhan Admasu said “Ethiopia has made great strides in its fight against communicable diseases and are now using our learnings and investments, to tackle non-communicable diseases.” “We believe that addressing the burden of hypertension through enhanced diagnosis, treatment and training, we will achieve, even surpass the goals set out on our NCD strategy.
Today we officially launch AstraZeneca’s Healthy Heart Africa programme in Ethiopia and look forward to working together to make a difference across the country”. Healthy Heart Africa, Senior Programme Director, Ian MacTavish, commented: “It’s an absolute pleasure and honour to be working with the Ethiopian government in support of their progressive National Strategic Action Plan for Non-Communicable Diseases.”
“This partnership is a hallmark example of how public and private institutions can collaborate to address the rising tide of non-communicable diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa.
We look forward to supporting Ethiopia’s fight against hypertension and cardiovascular disease more broadly by sharing our learnings from Healthy Heart Africa to help the Federal Ministry of Health achieve its ambitious chronic disease targets.” Africa is home to the highest prevalence of people over the age of 25 years with raised blood pressure, according to the World Health Organisation.
In 2000, there were approximately 80 million adults with hypertension in the continent, and current epidemiological data suggest that this figure will rise to 150 million by 2025. In contrast to developed regions, Africa has seen a steady increase in high blood pressure in both sexes since the 1990s. Read more here
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