Prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in rural area of Hmawbi and urban Yangon city.

With improvements in life expectancy and as more and more people have access to modern medicine, non-communicable diseases are emerging as a health problem in both urban and rural communities in Myanmar. Of all non-communicable diseases, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are known to be the major health problem. Since many studies that have been conducted in both developed and developing countries have shown a difference between rural and urban communities with regard to cardiovascular diseases, our study had the objective of finding out the prevalence of ischemic heart disease, hypertensive heart disease and rheumatic heart disease in a rural and urban community. The risk of obesity and smoking in the occurrence of CVD was also studied. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in three urban townships of Yangon City (Sanchaung, Latha and Pabedan) and one rural township of Hmawbi. The results showed that CVD were a health problem in both the urban and rural communities. Coronary heart disease was seen to be more prevalent in the urban townships than in the rural Hmawbi Township, but hypertension (HT) and rheumatic heart diseases (RHD) were more prevalent in the rural township of Hmawbi. Obesity which has been blamed as the major risk factor for CHD and HT in the developed countries was not found to be a risk factor in the study townships, but smoking was.