World Heart Day
The World Heart Day is a special day in the calendar year designated by the World Heart Federation since 1999. The objective is to propagate information to the world about how to maintain a healthy heart throughout one’s whole life. The World Heart Day solgan is therefore “a heart for life”. The World Heart Day is celebrated on the last Sunday in September every year.
For the past four years, World Heart Day has been held in more than 90 countries around the world in order to increase awareness of cardiovascular disease risk factors and to encourage people to take charge of those they can control by adopting a healthy lifestyle. All of this will help to reinforce the World Heart Day slogan. The fifth annual World Heart Day is to be held on 26th September, 2004, and this year’s focus is on “Children, Adolescents and Heart Disease”. This particular focus is the product of a memorandum of understanding signed by UNESCO, WHO and WHF, in 1996, whereby these three non-governmental organizations agreed to improve, in developing countries, the protection of health of school-age children and environmental health conditions in and around educational establishments.
Throughout the past decade, non-communicable diseases are emerging as important health problems not only in the developed countries but also in the developing countries where urbanization and globalization have brought about changes in lifestyle, which are unfortunately unhealthy. These unhealthy lifestyles, especially poor eating habits, physical inactivity and smoking, are the leading causes of heart disease and are increasingly being adopted at early ages, viz, among children and teenagers. The core messages of this year’s World Heart Day will be curbing of obesity and smoking and promotion of physical activity with the aim of preventing of future heart disease in today’s children.
For the first time, Myanmar will celebrate the World Heart Day on the 26th of September. The objective is to increase awareness of the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and its risk factors in our Myanmar population, which includes adults as well as children and adolescents and subsequently to encourage our people to lessen these problems by adopting a healthy lifestyle.
The two types of heart disease that can occur in children and adolescents are “congenital” and “acquired”. The most important and prevalent acquired heart disease that occurs in Myanmar is rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.
Rheumatic fever / rheumatic heart disease (RF/RHD) is the most common cardiovascular disease in children and young adults and remain a major health problem in developing countries. The disease affects 2.4 million children between 5 and 14 years old in low and middle income countries. In Myanmar, a study (Aung et al, 1992) has shown that it affects 6/1000 schoolchildren in the urban area and 19/1000 schoolchildren in a rural area. Rheumatic fever follows a neglected sore throat (streptococcal infection) and can be effectively treated with a simple penicillin injection. Repeated infections cause damage to the heart and by their late teens or early 20’s, the patients become ill and their quality of life becomes extremely poor. Recurrent attacks of rheumatic fever can be prevented by long-acting benzathine penicillin injections. However, few patients can afford them and fewer still have access to expensive medication for heart disease and corrective surgery or interventional procedures. They are unable to work and many die early. Rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, therefore, need to be diligently treated and prevented in childhood and adolescence. Cardiovascular diseases like hypertension, stroke, ischaemic heart disease and corpulmonale are prevalent in our adult Myanmar population. However, their risk factors begin in childhood because unhealthy lifestyles like unhealthy diets, somking and physical inactivity are more and more adopted at an early age. It thus becomes extremely important to implement adoption of healthy lifestyles in our children and youth, so as to prevent cardiovascular problems in the future.
Children and tobacco
The younger a person begins to smoke, the greater the risk of eventually contracting somking caused diseases. Half of the young people who continue to smoke will die from smoking.
Worldwide studies have revealed that the majority of somkers begin tobacco use before they reach the age of ten. Even in low and middle income countries, there is a high percentage (over 30%) of children who start to smoke before the age of ten. Among 13-15 year olds, 30% and over of boys are somkers. The figures are even more alarming for the Myanmar adolescents. Several studies conducted in many parts of the country reveal that over 50% of adolescents smoke.
Environmental tobacco smoke
Children exposed to tobacco smoke suffer from many of the diseases of active smoking. Almost half of the children worldwide live in a home of a smoker. In Myanmar, various studies have revealed that the prevalence of smoking is over 60% in the adult males and 30% in the adult females. Moreover, the offspring of these adult smokers are more likely to adopt the habit than those of non-smoking parents.
Non-smoking - can be promoted by encouraging parents of infants and children to stop smoking and reinforcing the commitment of ex-smokers. School children, beginning from the elementary age, should be taught that smoking is a harmful and addictive behaviour. Adolescents who have started smoking need to be counseled on how to quit the habit.
Children and obesity
Obese children are 3 times more likely to develop hypertension than non-obese children. Cohort studies show that obesity can be tracked from childhood to adulthood and is directly associated with increased morbidity and mortality in adult life independent of adult body weight. The risk of developing type 2 diabetes is linked to the increasing prevalence of obesity. A new trend has been noted in the increasing cases of type 2 diabetes in children worldwide, with some as young as 8 years of age being affected.
Childhood obesity is epidemic and on the rise in many parts of the world. Approximately 22 million children under 5 years are obese and many more are overweight across the world.
In Myanmar, it is a general observation that obesity is increasing in prevalence among our children, at least in the urban communities. An obesogenic environment currently exists, whereby food and soft drink advertisements on television encourage our children to ingest more and spend less calories and thus gain weight. Pediatric obesity should be diligently monitored and managed with the help of parents who should promote healthful dietary and activity habits for their children.
Children and inactivity
The television and computer support sedentary lifestyles with a snacking culture. Two thirds of the children worldwide are inactive for their health. Urbanization discourages physical activity. There are few walking or cycling lanes or parks for children in our towns and cities.
The World Heart Day slogan of “a heart for life” and this year’s focus on “children, adolescents and heart disease” intend to promote adoption of healthy lifestyles in the young in order to provide a healthy heart for the rest of their lives.
ref: http://hopestudygroup.ning.com/
