A Study on Behavioral and Biological Risk Factors Determination of Non-Communicable Diseases at Narayanganj

Abstract

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of mortality worldwide and NCDs along with infectious diseases are now considered as the serious public health threat to the developing countries like Bangladesh. The goal of the study was to determine the distribution of the risk factors of NCDs, the prevalence of NCDs and the knowledge of the population about the risk factors. A total of 290 respondents of ≥18 ages of different regions of Narayanganj district of Bangladesh participated in the study and responded to a structured questionnaire. About 23.79% of the people were suffering from hypertension, 12.76% from diabetes mellitus, 7.24% from asthma. Regarding the family history of the respondents smoking (57.93%), smokeless tobacco use (58.62%), hypertension (49.31%) and diabetes mellitus (33.10%) were prevalent. The major concerning issue was that 25.86% of study population used tobacco products whereas 20.34% and 5.86% of the people had stage1 hypertension & stage2 hypertension respectively. About 34.83% population used to add additional salt always and 20.62% of the people took at least a meal per day outside of home. According to BMI, almost half of the populations were overweight and majority of the female respondents were obese according to their waist circumference. Almost half of the study populations did not comply with the physical activity standard which might increase their chances for suffering from NCDs. The better part of the respondents took fruits and vegetable 5 or more days per week but didn’t comply with the standard. A prominent portion of the study populations were advised by doctors to change their lifestyle. But after analysis, it can be mentioned that respondents had enough knowledge about the association of health problems with these modifiable risk factors of NCDs but they had the lack of proper practice. Action to reduce should focus on preventing and controlling the risk factors in a unified manner. Intervention at all levels of society is essential for prevention by increasing awareness of people about a perfect and healthy lifestyle.