Barriers to management of cardiovascular risk in a low-resource setting using hypertension as an entry point

Abstract

If the absolute risk approach for assessment of risk and effective management of hypertension is to be implemented in low-resource settings, appropriate policy measures need to be taken to improve the competency of health-care providers, to provide basic laboratory facilities and to develop affordable financing mechanisms.

Can non-physician health-care workers assess and manage cardiovascular risk in primary care?

“…Socioeconomic barriers and inequalities in access to treatment, suboptimal staffing of health-care facilities and limited capacity for ancillary investigations that complement cardiovascular risk profiling are some of the common problems limiting these countries' control of chronic diseases, especially at the primary healthcare level. 4 This situation is worsened by the brain-drain syndrome [5][6][7][8][9] resulting in shortages of skilled workers.…”

“…Socioeconomic barriers and inequalities in access to treatment, suboptimal staffing of health-care facilities and limited capacity for ancillary investigations that complement cardiovascular risk profiling are some of the common problems limiting these countries' control of chronic diseases, especially at the primary healthcare level. 4 This situation is worsened by the brain-drain syndrome 5-9 resulting in shortages of skilled workers.Can non-physician health-care workers assess and manage cardiovascular risk in primary care? 29 However, such risk profiling protocols lack universal applicability 11,13,14,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] and may be of limited applicability in developing countries, whose populations were not sampled for the Framingham 31,32 and other studies.…”

The occurrence and quality of care of non-communicable diseases in people living with HIV in Maseru, Lesotho: a mixed-methods study

“…However, this highlights that there is need to improve patient education in this population. Mendis et al [30] emphasizes the need to scale up patient education to improve the patients' levels of health literacy about their NCDs and their respective treatments. Mugomeri et al [8] and Kilic et al [31] also corroborate this need in Lesotho.…”

Development of cardiovascular health education program for primary care patients with hypertension in rural Nigeria: a qualitative study

“…Unfortunately, many people in the region have no access to affordable hypertension care in their communities. In addition, in settings where affordable care is available, poor compliance can compromise treatment outcomes [6][7][8]. Indeed, adequate hypertension management is challenging in SSA and multiple interventions are needed to improve both access to-and compliance with quality care [9].…”