South Africa should introduce regulations that mandate the nutritional labelling of fast foods. This will help consumers make informed dietary choices.
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Articles on NCDs
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With such a sharp increase in global prevalence, it’s clear that diabetes is spiralling out of control. It can no longer be ignored.
Insulin and oral medicines for diabetes are mostly not available at the recommended level in the African region.
It’s not clear how health claims could be substantiated, enforced or understood, but there are other ways to encourage healthy food choices.
Targets for diabetes would improve healthy lives, reduce deaths, and be cost effective. But they should not be for managing diabetes alone; they must include treating hypertension.
Big Food companies producing ulta-processed foods are using a range of key market and political practices to increase their reach, particularly in developing countries.
South Africa needs a public health response that expands the successes of the country’s HIV testing and treatment programme to provide care for multiple diseases.
Harsh socio-environmental factors, especially when they happen in the early years of a child’s life, can establish a developmental “biology of misfortune”.
A ban on sugary drinks sale and advertisements in schools is likely to hold more promise in improving the diets of children and help prevent obesity in children than voluntary actions.
In 2019, 89,834 people died of diabetes. This number exceeds the capacity of Soccer City, the biggest football stadium in South Africa.
Governments must take urgent action to prevent noncommunicable diseases from becoming an uncontrollable epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Sugar-sweetened beverage taxation offers a potential solution.
Without reliable, local and timely data, countries will miss the potential of sugar-sweetened beverage taxation as a public health intervention.
Rwanda’s food policies focus on production to make sure people have livelihoods and enough nutritious food. Not much attention is given to overnutrition.
Tension between the government’s economic and public health priorities is preventing stronger fiscal measures to address nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases.
Between 2018 and 2019 Kenya registered a 30% spike in sugar production and an increase in sugar consumption.
Implementing a sugar-sweetened beverage tax in all African countries will require sufficient political will and support from civil society.
The results are in: South Africa’s ground-breaking health promotion levy, introduced in 2018, is working.
Workplace-based interventions could make a substantial contribution to reducing the burden of noncommunicable diseases in the country.
The health and wellbeing effects will go beyond the direct impact of war-related fatalities, and are likely to last for years after peace is fully restored.
A stroke often leads to the sudden onset of weakness involving the face, arm or leg, an inability to speak, difficulty walking or impaired vision. Strokes can cause death and irreversible disability.
Top contributors
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Professor and Programme Director, SA MRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science - PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand
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Professor of Public Health, The University of Melbourne
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Associate Professor, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne
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Senior researcher, University of the Witwatersrand
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Phillip Baker is a Friend of The Conversation.
Research Fellow, Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University, Deakin University
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Professor of Global Health, Institute for Applied Research, University of Birmingham
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Researcher, SAMRC/Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science- PRICELESS SA, University of the Witwatersrand
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Emeritus Professor, Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney
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Masters of Public Health graduate, Harvard University
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D.Phil. Candidate in Population Health, University of Oxford
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Director, Cochrane South Africa, South African Medical Research Council
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Division of Family Medicine and Primary Care, Stellenbosch University
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Research officer, African Population and Health Research Center
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Associate Professor, School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand
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Director of the Non-Communicable Diseases Research Unit at the South African Medical Research Council, Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Cape Town
