Download Factsheet

Key Facts

CVDs are the leading cause of death in the adult population in Ghana affecting the most productive age group.

The CVDs heart failure and stroke are the leading causes of death in Ghana, primarily driven by uncontrolled hypertension.

The most important risk factors for CVDs include smoking, history of hypertension or diabetes mellitus, obesity, unhealthy diet, alcohol abuse, lack of physical activity, dyslipidaemia, family history of heart disease, and psychosocial factors.

Early diagnosis and adequate management of risk factors can reduce the fatal consequences of CVDs. However, medical staff often lack the capacities to manage patients with CVDs properly.

What are cardiovascular diseases?

CVDs are a group of disorders of the heart and blood vessels. They are the leading cause of death worldwide, claiming the lives of an estimated 17.9 million people each year. Heart attack and stroke account for more than four out of five CVD deaths, and one-third of these deaths occur prematurely in adults under the age of 70. Heart attack and stroke are typically sudden events and are mainly caused by a clog that prevents blood from flowing to the heart or brain. The most common cause is an accumulation of fatty deposits on the inner walls of blood vessels that supply the heart or brain. Strokes can be caused by blood clots or bleeding from a blood vessel in the brain mainly due to untreated high blood pressure.

How can CVDs be prevented?

There are many risk factors associated with cardiovascular diseases. Some risk factors, such as family history, cannot be modified. Behavioral risk factors such as unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, tobacco use and harmful use of alcohol, however, can be modified by changing the individual lifestyle. It is therefore important to raise awareness about those behavioral risk factors.Besides individual choices to be made, it is also the responsibility of governments and policymakers to facilitate a healthy life by ensuring that healthy food is affordable, urban spaces encourage an active lifestyle and air pollution is reduced. Health policies that create environments where healthy choices are readily available and affordable, are essential for motivating people to adopt and sustain a healthier lifestyle.

What are the risk factors of CVDs in Ghana?

At least three-quarters of all CVD deaths worldwide occur in low- and middle-income countries. People living in low- and middle-income countries frequently lack the benefit of primary healthcare programs for early detection and treatment of risk factors and often have limited access to effective and equitable healthcare services that meet their needs. As a result, the detection occurs late in the course of the disease and people die at a young age from CVDs, not uncommonly, in their most productive years.Important risk factors for many CVDs are unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, tobacco use, harmful alcohol consumption and untreated elevated blood pressure. Individuals may experience raised blood glucose, raised blood lipids, overweight and obesity as a result of unhealthy behavior. Other determinants of CVDs include stress and hereditary factors. The most impoverished population in low- and middle-income countries are vastly affected. At the individual level, evidence is emerging that CVDs contribute to poverty due to high out-of-pocket expenditure. At the macro-economic level, CVDs impose a significant burden on the economies of low- and middle-income countries.

How the GHI supports the prevention of CVDs in Ghana

Even though the burden of CVDs is rapidly increasing in Ghana, the focus of national health authorities is primarily on communicable diseases and maternal and child health interventions. The Ghana Heart Initiative (GHI) is raising awareness about the urgency of this topic and partners with the national health authorities to tackle this challenge together. The GHI supports the prevention of CVDs in Ghana through primordial prevention promoting healthy lifestyle changes, primary prevention addressing hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidemia and secondary prevention by the adequate treatment of established CVDs to avoid a worsening of the condition. In the trainings provided by the GHI, health professionals learn about the risk factors of CVDs and how to prevent them. With this knowledge gained, they are now raising awareness among their patients to adapt a healthier lifestyle. Patients are now regularly checked for hypertension and put on treatment. Data shows that the proportion of those patients who have reached a controlled blood pressure increased from 7% to 77% in the GHI beneficiary health facilities during the project duration (2019-2023), indicating that the training and mentoring of health workers helped to significantly improve the management of hypertension. In 2023, the GHI launched a hypertension intervention focusing on the urban coastal communities in the Greater Accra Region. Households are visited by community health nurses to get their blood pressure checked – a total of 10,000 community members are screened and the detected hypertensive patients linked to treatment in their nearby health facility and enrolled in the national health insurance system.Through this early detection and treatment of hypertensive patients, complications such as stroke, heart failure and chronic kidney diseases and associated high mortality can be prevented.