Specialists needed to tackle rising heart disease

ABU DHABI // Heart disease made up 27 per cent of all deaths last year in the emirate - an increase of 2 per cent over the previous year.

The number of deaths fell to 2,879 last year from 2,917 in 2009 but those who died from heart disease last year rose to 763 from 707 in the previous year.

Dr Wael Mahmeed, the head of the Emirates Cardiac Society, warned heart disease was increasing as the Health Authority-Abu Dhabi (Haad) yesterday released its Health Statistics 2010 report.

"Cardiovascular disease is the No 1 killer in the Third World and will continue to be No 1 until at least 2020," he said.

"In the western world, it is dropping, but in the Third World it is increasing and will continue to go up."

According to Dr Mahmeed, the UAE had experienced a rise in heart disease because 60 per cent of the population was obese or overweight, while 20 to 30 per cent were smokers. If these risk factors were not tackled, he said, the disease would never be controlled.

Specialists and well-trained consultants in cardiology must be recruited to Abu Dhabi to address the rising burden, especially in areas such as congenital heart disease, prevention and imaging.

Cardiology was identified as a speciality with a severe shortage of staff, and Dr Mahmeed said that improving the recruitment and licensing process could help address the gap. "We are in a global market and we are competing with the rest of the world for sub-specialists and we are going to continue to be in the global market.

"In order to attract doctors you have to have competitive packages and the other limiting problem is that licensing takes some time."

Following heart disease, injuries and external causes not related to diseases were the second leading cause of death at 19 per cent, followed by cancer, which was at 16 per cent.

Of the 2,879 deaths in the emirate last year, 551 were injury-related, 19 per cent fewer than in 2009 when 680 such deaths occurred.

This included deaths from traffic accidents (down 19 per cent), deaths from occupational injuries (down nine per cent), suicides (down 18 per cent), accidental death in the home (down 63 per cent) and drowning (up eight per cent).

A surprising figure in the 2010 report showed that there were more insurance contracts than there were residents in the emirate. Haad did not explain the discrepancy.

The figures showed that 35 licensed insurers provided 2.7 million contracts and processed 13.1 million claims last year, 98 per cent of which were for outpatient care.

According to the report, of the 2.3 million residents in Abu Dhabi, 19 per cent were Emirati with an average age of 18. For expatriates, the average age was 31.

Emiratis, however, were responsible for 45 per cent of the 13.2 million healthcare visits in 2010.

hkhalaf@thenational.ae

* With additional reporting by Bana Qabbani