Middle class life brings on diabetes in Africans
Source: Agencies |
October 25, 2010, Monday
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Print Edition
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MEDICAL experts gathered from around Africa were in Johannesburg, South Africa, to talk about a continent-wide epidemic, but it was not AIDS or malaria. It was diabetes, and the bad habits that cause it.
A growing urban middle class is defying the image of Africa as poor, underfed and undermedicated. And with the comforts of middle class life, afflictions familiar in the West are being felt - obesity, diabetes, lung cancer, strokes, heart disease.
A continent that traditionally traveled on foot or by bicycle now increasingly rides cars and buses. More time is spent at desks. Elevators are replacing stairs. White-collar Africans are discovering the gym.
"In the past, we used to exercise without knowing it," South Africa's health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, reminded the recent conference.
"You would walk a long distance to school. You would walk a long distance to work. You would walk a long distance to the shops," Motsoaledi, 52, recalled of his childhood. "But now I'm an African whose child is dropped at the gate of the school in a car, then picked up at the end of the day and put in front of the TV..."
In West Africa, Cameroonians who once ate rice only as a holiday treat are loading their plates with it, crowding out the vegetables their parents ate. Down south, Malawians say fast foods are a status symbol.
In Nairobi, Kenya, a sobering chat with his doctor got 27-year-old Robel Demissi to the gym. "My blood pressure had gone up, a bit more than last year, and my weight was 8 kilograms more. That's a lot," he says.
Demissi, a pilot for a Kenyan airline, blames his weight gain on junk food and a workload that leaves little time for exercise. But lest he flunk his physical and lose his flying license, he has taken up Thai martial art and has lost 6 kilograms.
"I never used to have the time to train," he said, "but now I have two motivating factors to make the time: my job and my life."
All over the world, these lifestyle diseases tend to go hand in hand with urbanization and industrialization, and the results are felt in rising obesity rates and related illnesses. But they are all the more unwelcome in Africa, which already struggles with AIDS and malaria.
"These countries are really faced with a double burden," said Timothy Armstrong, an expert on chronic diseases with the UN World Health Organization. How, he wonders, is a doctor treating AIDS or malaria to find time to lecture patients about watching their weight?
Armstrong wants African governments to follow the West's lead with tobacco taxes and pressure on the food industry to cut salt and sugar content. But awareness is lacking.
Fatima Macuacua, 31, owns a grocery store in Maputo, capital of Mozambique, and refuses to believe fast foods could be bad for her.
"Cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and other diseases are not a big problem for Africans," she insisted. "Maybe for Europeans."
A growing urban middle class is defying the image of Africa as poor, underfed and undermedicated. And with the comforts of middle class life, afflictions familiar in the West are being felt - obesity, diabetes, lung cancer, strokes, heart disease.
A continent that traditionally traveled on foot or by bicycle now increasingly rides cars and buses. More time is spent at desks. Elevators are replacing stairs. White-collar Africans are discovering the gym.
"In the past, we used to exercise without knowing it," South Africa's health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, reminded the recent conference.
"You would walk a long distance to school. You would walk a long distance to work. You would walk a long distance to the shops," Motsoaledi, 52, recalled of his childhood. "But now I'm an African whose child is dropped at the gate of the school in a car, then picked up at the end of the day and put in front of the TV..."
In West Africa, Cameroonians who once ate rice only as a holiday treat are loading their plates with it, crowding out the vegetables their parents ate. Down south, Malawians say fast foods are a status symbol.
In Nairobi, Kenya, a sobering chat with his doctor got 27-year-old Robel Demissi to the gym. "My blood pressure had gone up, a bit more than last year, and my weight was 8 kilograms more. That's a lot," he says.
Demissi, a pilot for a Kenyan airline, blames his weight gain on junk food and a workload that leaves little time for exercise. But lest he flunk his physical and lose his flying license, he has taken up Thai martial art and has lost 6 kilograms.
"I never used to have the time to train," he said, "but now I have two motivating factors to make the time: my job and my life."
All over the world, these lifestyle diseases tend to go hand in hand with urbanization and industrialization, and the results are felt in rising obesity rates and related illnesses. But they are all the more unwelcome in Africa, which already struggles with AIDS and malaria.
"These countries are really faced with a double burden," said Timothy Armstrong, an expert on chronic diseases with the UN World Health Organization. How, he wonders, is a doctor treating AIDS or malaria to find time to lecture patients about watching their weight?
Armstrong wants African governments to follow the West's lead with tobacco taxes and pressure on the food industry to cut salt and sugar content. But awareness is lacking.
Fatima Macuacua, 31, owns a grocery store in Maputo, capital of Mozambique, and refuses to believe fast foods could be bad for her.
"Cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and other diseases are not a big problem for Africans," she insisted. "Maybe for Europeans."
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