Government urged to increase budgetary allocation towards health

Homa Bay, Wednesday, May 17, 2023

KNA by Sitna Omar

Residents in Homa Bay have been urged to go for hypertension screening to ascertain their status to avoid complications of the disease at an advanced stage.

Dr. Meli Hermine, Mobile Health Activity Manager Medicine San Frontiers (MSF) said they regularly receive patients with complications at the hospital who are unaware of their status because they have never been screened before.

“The simple tool for diagnosing hypertension is just a blood pressure machine which is found everywhere in all levels of facilities and so it is surprising to see patients in that condition,” she said.

She noted that the management strategy for hypertension lies in measuring blood pressure correctly and controlling it for one to live longer.

The doctor was speaking on Wednesday in Marindi within Homa Bay Sub-County during a joint celebration of World Hypertension Day and Asthma Day.

She said MSF is undertaking interventions to mitigate Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) including Hypertension in a project that commenced in 2021 with an objective of reducing mortality and complications relating to the diseases.

The idea was to shift the task from the higher level to the peripheral facility including the community-based in collaboration with the Ministry of Health.

The disease’s prevalence is high, at 21.4 per cent nationally according to Ms. Hermine who said that the figures might not be accurate as there are other citizens out there who are undiagnosed.

“We hope that with these opportunities and lots of public sensitization, more will be screened and in a few months or years we will be able to get the accurate figures,” she hoped.

Ms. Hermine explained that they have a support group for patients who are already in the programme where the doctors focus on one’s lifestyle modifications to control the disease.

MSF Project Coordinator Bright Mukhuna said the county faces the challenge of accessibility of hypertension drugs.

“A lot of medications are not accessible to the people. MSF is giving patients medication that has been validated by the World Health Organization (WHO) but the county does not have access to it,” he noted.

He urged the County Government to allocate more budget to the Ministry Of Health so that the disease can be managed effectively.

Hypertension being a lifestyle disease has a number of risk factors including, stress, obesity or being overweight, lack of exercise, and the general lifestyle of an individual including alcohol consumption, eating too much salt and fat regularly and smoking among other uncontrollable factors like age and genetics.

This disease which is also known as high blood pressure is considered as one of the silent illnesses where one would be living with it, with his organs being destroyed yet one feels totally normal.

“This has been mainly a disease of the West because it is generally a lifestyle disease associated with a sedentary lifestyle where you do not move much, eat lots of sugar, salt and consumes alcohol. We are finding that more and more people are getting this illness,” said Dr. Amos Dullo

Dullo who is the County Deputy Director of Health noted that the World Hypertension Day celebration is an opportunity for the department to talk to the people to build awareness around hypertension.

“We have an opportunity to stop this disease before it gets entrenched in our people because the earlier it is diagnosed the earlier it can be controlled,” he said.

Courtesy; K.N.A