| Project Detail |
Globally, cardiovascular diseases account for 17 million deaths annually. According to the WHO 2022 report, approximately 37% of premature deaths in East Africa are caused by cardiovascular diseases. Most of these deaths could have been averted by primary prevention or instituting lifesaving procedures that are not necessarily expensive provided skilled human resource and the required facilities are in place. However, Africa has the lowest cardiac centres at 1 to 33 million population compared to Asia: 1 to16 million, Europe: 1 to1 million and USA: 1 to 12 hundred thousand people. East Africa has 12 cardiac units/centres in a population of approximately 200 million. Tanzania, the partner state hosting the East African Centre of Excellence for Cardiovascular Sciences, has only 2 cardiac centres in a population of 60 million. In terms of human resource, Africa has a severe shortage of cardiac specialists, for example a cardiac surgeon (for adults): population ratio is 1:25 million population in Sub Saharan Africa, while the global ratio for the same is 1.6 (range 0-181) per 1 million population. |
