Dubai: Nearly 30-70 per cent of the people in the UAE either have some form of cardiovascular disease or are at a high risk, said an expert on the sidelines of the launch of a ground-breaking prevention programme in the UAE held in collaboration with the American College of Cardiology (ACC) on Thursday.
The programme, first launched in China, met with such success that it is now being rolled out in the UAE, and will be introduced in nine other countries subsequently, experts said.
Dr Juwariya Al Ali, consultant cardiac surgeon at Rashid Hospital and member of the Emirates Cardiac Society, said CVD is responsible for nearly 30 per cent deaths among the non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the UAE, according to World Health Organisation’s fact sheet.
Other multi-risk factors in the UAE include people who do not exercise (37 per cent), obesity incidence (32 per cent), and those who risk CVD from smoking (20 per cent) of the population.
The cardiac surgeons and physicians who participate in the webinar-based conference will not only be educated on the current medical trends on cardiology updates but also be made aware of the resources and practical tools available to address the problem, added Dr Al Ali.
The one-year CVD prevention programme is based on three interactive webinars that will educate the cardiac specialists who sign up, and train them to help reduce the incidence of cardiac strokes and heart attacks around the country. The programme strives to meet the UAE National Health Agenda target of reducing CVD-related deaths from 300 per 100,000 of the population to 150 by 2021, Dr Al Ali said.
Dr Pamela Morris, spokesperson for ACC, explained how the programme would be implemented. “This programme was launched in China and met with huge success and we are now launching it in the UAE this year and will follow up with a similar launch in nine other countries.
“The programme will ask the participating cardiac specialists to fill up a detailed questionnaire that will [provide information] to enable us to fill the knowledge gaps, if any. Following which the three webinars will specifically address these issues — to train cardiac specialists on primary prevention of heart attacks which would mean preventing the first-ever instance of heart attack in the patient, inform specialists how to assess the risk level of their patient and focus specifically on the high risks of NCDs in the UAE and the ways to tackle this, among other things.”
Dr Seth Martin, cardiologist from Johns Hopkins and an ACC member, elaborated: “The second webinar will deal with secondary prevention and avoiding the repeat of a heart attack and the third webinar will train specialists to look out for multi-risk factors such as obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension and other such issues that cause other diseases as well as CVDs and how to avoid heart attacks in such people.”
Dr Morris added that the feedback from the Pfizer-sponsored programme in China reaped rich dividends in terms of a high level of knowledge, preparedness among doctors and encouraged them to repeat it in several other countries.
Dr Salim Virani, associate cardiology professor and ACC member, talked about his mnemonic approach to tackling CVD. “The ABCDE approach is effective in educating cardiac specialists dealing with heart disease. “A stands for aspirin, B for blood pressure, C for cigarette smoking and cholesterol, D for diet and diabetes prevention and E for importance of exercise,” he said.
