Disease and risk factor assessment
Following the establishment of the mortality surveillance program and under the leadership of the Byrraju Foundation, Hyderabad, the collaboration did a health survey of 4,535 adults in 20 of the participating villages.
Aim
The goals of this survey were to:
- Document the non-fatal disease burden in the communities
- Discover the likely causes of fatal and non-fatal diseases
- Quantify population understanding of key aspects of chronic disease and
- Document access to and use of health care facilities
Method
Disease prevalence and treatment patterns were estimated from an age and sex stratified random sample of adults 30 years and over that was done in 20 villages selected based upon population size, district and distance from a large town to achieve a group of villages representative of the Godavari region. Data collection was done by trained interviewers who administered a structured questionnaire based on validated tools and expert advice from a range of sources.
Status
The outcomes for the survey included prevalence of vascular disease, treatment profile and prevalence of the main determinants of cardiovascular disease in the adult population.
Results
It was found that about 7% of adults aged 30 years and above reported suffering from some form of cardiovascular disease: about 4% had been diagnosed by a doctor with angina, 2% with a stroke, and 1% with a heart attack. Many people were unaware of their vascular health risks, few were receiving treatments, and knowledge about the causes of cardiovascular disease was very limited.
