Though metabolic diseases do not spread like infectious ones, they are as dangerous as other; accordingly metabolic diseases and non-communicable diseases are included in the National healthcare program like diabetes, high blood pressure, and blood lipid.
One of the most current popular diseases is disorders of lipid metabolism, said Dr. Phan Nguyen Thanh Binh from the Ho Chi Minh City Nutrition Center. Through a medical investigation, up to 77.8 percent obese people have lipid metabolism disorders and 35.6 percent people suffer disorders of carbohydrate metabolism.
According to Vietnam Heart Association Prof. Pham Gia Khai, researches showed that the rate of those with high level of cholesterol in blood will be two or three time higher than others without it. High level of cholesterol in blood is also the causes of high blood pressure, strokes, fat in liver, gallstones, diabetes and obesity.
Prof. Khai said that one of every 2 town-dwellers and 2 of every 3 senior people have high cholesterol. Medical experts fretted also about the above-mentioned proportion because high level of cholesterol in blood leads to many other diseases threatening one’s life, especially those who have high blood cholesterol will be able to get coronary heart disease, also called coronary artery disease.
As per the National Nutrition Center’s initial statistic, around 26 percent of people in the age of 25 to 74 have disorders of lipid metabolism. In big cities including Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, the number of people with high blood lipid is 44 percent-45 percent.
Along with this disease, the number of people with high blood pressure also hikes. Dr. Nguyen Huy Thang from the Vietnam Stroke Association said that if people do not tightly control blood pressure at normal level, they will have stroke because high blood pressure is a major cause of strokes.
Annually, more than 200,000 Vietnamese people get strokes and nearly 11,000 have died of the disease and the rest has suffered physically disability. Even children have high blood pressure, according to the Ho Chi Minh City Nutrition Center’s survey.
As per the survey, the proportion of students of all grades have high blood pressure in 2014 was 15.4 percent; worse, 13.4 percent of primary students got. Dr. Do Thi Ngoc Diep, director of the HCMC Nutrition Center fretted over the number of children with high blood pressure because it showed a risk of diseases which affect their future studies, intelligence and labor capability.
At a meeting of treatment mission in 2015 held lately, Head of the Health Ministry’s Medical Examination and Treatment Department Luong Ngoc Khue, said during past 3 years, the number of people in HCMC with diabetes increased threefold or nearly one million people having diabetes, accounting for 9 percent of the whole city population.
Within 2 years, Nguyen Tri Phuong Hospital in HCMC’s district 5 has received nearly 1,000 cases of diabetes per year. Most of people did not suppose to have diabetes until their blood tests showed. Some people even have suffered diabetes complications such as eye problem.
As per the Medical Examination and Treatment Department’s statistics, the rate of diabetes people in urban was 2.5 percent, 4 percent, and 8 percent in 1990, in 2001 and 2015 respectively. Worse, over 65 percent of them did not know to have the disease.
Medical experts said that the unbalanced lifestyle, stress and polluted environment are major factors to cause metabolism disorders.
