EJMS

Abstract

Prevalence of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is increasing in low middle income countries causing major economic losses, and huge burden on health systems. CVDs are responsible for 18 million deaths annually; 80% of them are in developing countries. CVDs main risk factors are tobacco, unhealthy diet, lack of physical exercise, high levels of serum cholesterol, and hypertension. These factors are preventable, however it is very challenging to tackle them in developing countries. Usually interventions, originate from developed countries, focus on each of these risk factors individually, which is not cost-effective in low resources settings. Therefore, this review aims to identify integrated interventions that tackle all or most risk factors at the same time. Methodology of data collection included searching key health databases; Global-health, Pub-med, and Medline, using combinations of key words and truncations. Then reference lists of relevant articles, google scholar search engine, Leeds University library’s website and World Health Organization’s (WHO) website were searched for relevant literature. Two approaches of CVDs prevention were identified; population based interventions, and risk groups based interventions. The later should be prioritized in low resources settings. Two main integrated interventions that can affect all risk factors of CVDs in high risk groups were detected; the first is the WHO Package of Essential Non-communicable Diseases Interventions (PEN), and the second is task shifting. Both of these interventions are cost-effective, however there is lack of published studies evaluating PEN, and there is lack of published studies evaluating task shifting in the context of CVDs prevention. Therefore, this review recommends the need of more research in this area.