Seventy people including journalists, medical academics and media studies scholars recently attended by what Discovery Centre for Health Journalism director Prof Harry Dugmore called "the largest gathering of health journalists ever held in South Africa".
Seventy people including journalists, medical academics and media studies scholars recently attended by what Discovery Centre for Health Journalism director Prof Harry Dugmore called "the largest gathering of health journalists ever held in South Africa".
“With better journalism and more communication, we can help people make the changes that can add years to their lives."
This is what Dugmore has envisioned for health journalists after a recent three-day symposium at Rhodes University's Journalism and Media Studies on improving coverage of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Dugmore is director of the Discovery Centre for Health Journalism at the Journalism department.
The symposium posed questions about how the media in South Africa approach NCDs – illnesses that humans don’t physically pass onto each other – in the context of competing health challenges.
For example, about 500 South Africans on average still die of Aids-related illnesses in South Africa every day. At the same time heart disease and strokes, smoking-related cancers and the harm done by excessive use of alcohol are claiming more and more lives.
“Globally, since 1990, deaths from diabetes have doubled [since being]measured in 2010. Cancer and heart and stroke-related deaths are up 40% in just 20 years,” said Dugmore.
“Much of the increase in these preventable deaths is rooted in many of us getting too little movement into our day. Add the big increases in the amount of fast and unhealthy food we eat, and steep rises in alcohol consumption, and we are starting to see something of an NCD epidemic developing.”
The symposium was opened by Ruth Lewin, head of corporate sustainability at Discovery. She said journalists need to do more to empower people.
“We need to provide society with the right tools so that they are able to make health changes in their lives,” said Lewin. “It is only when people understand health that they will be able to make well-informed health choices.”
Dugmore said the conference focused on four lifestyle ‘behaviours’ (smoking, drinking in excess, sedentariness, and poor diet) that contribute to four chronic diseases (type two diabetes, lung disease, heart disease and some cancers). These contribute to 80% of premature deaths from NCDs in the world.
Prof Debbie Bradshaw of the Medical Research Council (MRC) explained the concept of ‘premature death’ and how bio-statisticians, like herself, calculate the number of years of life lost to these four lifestyle-related NCD clusters for entire populations.
“We work out how long people could live using various models, and then subtract how much of that life is lost by people dying younger then they theoretically should. And we also factor in more and more people being disabled by chronic diseases,” said Bradshaw.
These trends mean that average life expectancy, which has been increasing steeply for 150 years, is stabilising and, in many countries, coming down.
A lot of this has to do with HIV, Aids and TB, but in future NCDs are going to play a big role.
In South Africa, the number of men who are physically inactive is high and increasing. More than half of men over 25, and about two-thirds of women over 25, are almost measured to be ‘inactive’ – getting little exercise of even the most basic kind – each day.
Partly because of this, average blood pressure readings in the South African population are shooting up, as are average weights.
“We [South Africans] are getting measurably heavier on average each year,” said Dugmore.
But there are solutions. Dr Tracy Kolbe-Alexander, from the University of Cape Town/MRC research unit for exercise science and sports medicine, emphasised that South Africans need to move more and sit less.
This means finding ways to keep moving throughout the day. “Just chewing gum, fidgeting more, taking the stairs instead of the lift, and finding ways to have little 10-minute bursts of physical activity, can really improve most people’s health,” Kolbe-Alexander said.
This does not mean people should refrain from other exercise, but recognises that most people find it easier to add more movement and short walks into their daily routine.
Sitting – researchers are now sure from recent large-scale projects – is an independent risk factor for many NCDs.
“You should never sit for too long,” said Dr Kolbe-Alexander. “Get up at least every hour, or every time you answer the phone.”
Prof Charles Parry from the MRC showed how South Africans are drinking themselves into early graves, with an increase in binge drinking.
Very moderate drinking can have some health benefits, he suggested, but drinking to excess is always harmful. “Even though half of sub-Saharan African men and almost 70% of women don’t drink at all, we still managed to consume on average almost 20 litres of pure alcohol, on average per person, per year,” Parry said.
“That means those of us who do drink, are often drinking to excess.”
Alcohol not only contributes to all the common NCDs, but also impacts on the levels of violence in societies, and South Africa’s very high road accident death rate.
Other matters were addressed by leading South African experts, including Dr Yussuf Saloojee of the National Council Against Smoking, Dr Vash Mungal-Singh of the Heart and Stroke Foundation SA, and Dr Sarah Rayne, a specialist surgeon with an interest in breast disease and breast cancer, among more than 20 speakers.
“Everyone who participated, including the 40 or so journalists who attended, were about equal part alarmed and inspired,” said Dugmore.
“Alarmed because risk factors for NCDs are climbing so steeply in the world and in South Africa, and inspired because there is so much exciting research and new ideas about how to get South Africa moving more, eating more healthily, and cutting down on smoking, drinking and salt consumption.”
For more about the symposium, see www.discoverycentre.ru.ac.za.
