Date: Friday, 22 September 2023
Authors: Heba Sharaf
Country: United Arab Emirates
SUMMARY
The "Wellness Revolution in Africa" examines the continent's health crisis, with solely 5-10% of humans classified as healthy. It identifies key challenges like constrained healthcare access, usual medicine reliance, and rising chronic diseases. The article calls for merchandising a healthier life through education, policy changes, and community empowerment. It additionally emphasizes the position of governments and partnerships in improving public health results throughout Africa.
BACKGROUND
1. Abstract
This article seeks to examine healthy lifestyles in Africa, where it has been revealed that only 5-10 percent of the African population can be classified as healthy. This categorization broadly stems from the large variations in the daily lives of people on the continent and the multiple health determinants that these populations face (Health Organization, 2020).
The disparities lead to different health challenges that can be overwhelming in their frequency and impact. Though many countries have minimal access to health facilities, there is a slow rate of commitment from healthcare professionals.
A significant percentage of people in Africa still use traditional medicine, which often relies on plant resources. Furthermore, the living and dietary practices of most Africans are inevitably detrimental to health (Health Organization, 2020). As a result, infectious diseases have, in recent times, been supplemented or supplanted by chronic ones, leading to an increase in general morbidity on the continent.
For these reasons, there is a need to secure a full promotion of healthy lifestyles in Africa, compare the challenges, and suggest better ways of tackling them. Three key strategies and a number of recommendations aimed at helping stakeholders guide the process of promoting healthy lifestyles on the continent are explored. Finally, the health significance of adopting policy measures to prevent the challenges identified is stressed (Health Organization, 2020).
2. Introduction
Over the past decades, lifestyle has emerged as an important topic of concern according to several dimensions; evidence from a variety of disciplines has shown that how people live and behave is significantly dictated by the environment they are familiar with, as well as the attributes of the society they belong to, including lifestyle and risk factors such as diet, addictions, physical activity, sleeping habits, sexuality, and leisure opportunities (An & Gregg, 2022).
Generally speaking, the majority of average citizens assume lifestyles are voluntary choices, and individuals, removed from the constraints of biology, are free to crystallize their personalities in various and distinctive ways. This is now beginning to change. The environment restrains choice, cunningly, as if it were a form of tyranny exercising control over the will of the masses by imposing constraint - they are called lifestyles (An & Gregg, 2022).
Several development reports have stereotyped the continent of Africa as marginalized and excluded from international efforts and emerging trends toward ensuring the right to the highest attainable standard of health. Socially excluded groups and the larger policy focus on the consequences of fatal diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and tropical diseases, as well as the third-world debt crisis (An & Gregg, 2022).
Although numerous gains have been achieved through the various national health policies in Africa, health disparities continue to escalate; the main factors that make health issues particularly challenging in much of Africa are the dismal level of underfunding of healthcare services, the increasing burden of infectious and cardiovascular diseases, and the out-migration of health professionals, especially doctors, to countries that have the financial resources to attract and retain healthcare professionals from Africa (Baker, 2024).
Infectious diseases represent the most important challenges for Africa and the major sources of morbidity statistics. These include malaria, and hence, the continent also bears the burden of a large percentage of the global number of people infested and killed by these parasites.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic has worst hit Africans, and many countries in this continent face an epidemic of tuberculosis, with the prevalence rates even five times higher than in the European Region (Baker, 2024). There is also growing access to health services, preferably from traditional health practitioners, who use both conventional medical methods and interventions and provide these services with the notion of mind, body, and spirit.
The region bears a significant burden of illness and disability due to HIV/AIDS and infectious and contagious diseases, largely as a result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The priority areas are then intersectoral initiatives that aim to promote healthy lifestyles for all in order to help achieve global health for all (Baker, 2024).
In this essay, we describe the strategies and various initiatives currently on offer and suggest options for the African government and the international community operating in this region to give it serious thought. Baker (2024) discusses the major challenges and opportunities open to the African international community in this important policy area.
3. Challenges in Health Lifestyles in Africa
African countries are potentially able to provide for and ensure a high level of health and well-being; however, numerous challenges make this target difficult to achieve (Chukwu & Edeh, 2023).
Most countries are facing the worst epidemic crises in the world; African countries also have large variations in health problems between urban and rural areas; the main causes of health problems in these countries can be categorized into lifestyle factors (Chukwu & Edeh, 2023).
Indeed, these countries have a high consumption of addictive substances, a widespread practice of harmful behaviors, and the consumption of contaminated and toxic foodstuffs that can further contribute to health diseases.
The main health problems related to lifestyle and resulting from an inadequate diet include chronic diseases, malnutrition, and infectious diseases (Chukwu & Edeh, 2023). Nevertheless, several socio-economic and cultural factors can also exacerbate such problems. Only a few public structures are sensitive to these issues, presenting empirical solutions useful for different countries and local communities. For this reason, it is increasingly important to dedicate research and estimate effective strategies to reduce the burden on these nations (Chukwu & Edeh, 2023).
Difficulties in ensuring a high level of health and well-being still exist today. This situation causes unfavorable living conditions often connected to problems of malnutrition, low physical activity, and the prevention of many diseases, such as hypokinetic diseases, undefined pathological states, malnutrition-related deaths, and issues with drinking water (Gershman, 2020).
Lifestyle problems can also be assessed in terms of the unequal distribution of diseases between urban and rural areas. The rural population has a lower prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, and overweight. However, rural areas are more affected by anemia and undernutrition, such as micronutrient deficiency (Gershman, 2020). Although Africa is suffering from serious health problems, it is vital not to generalize certain factors to the whole continent any longer. Urbanization and changes in lifestyle, along with the dual burden of malnutrition and overweight, can also be classified as crucial health problems facing African populations (Gershman, 2020).
4. Strategies to Promote Healthy Lifestyles in Africa
Health promotion strategies advocated globally through the Ottawa Charter framework of holistic empowerment of communities to take increased control over conditions under which they must live to mean first, educating people about healthier lifestyles to gain increasing control of personal lifestyles and consequent ill health and second, enhancing the capacities of individuals to decrease their reliance on health care systems and technology (Van Ginneken & Musango, 2017).
Similarly, global leadership in the development of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health points out that lifestyle health behavior alterations can be reliably addressed through action on social determinants, including the environments in which people live, work, eat, and play (Van Ginneken & Musango, 2017).
First, it is a top priority to prevent illness, and for this, we need to live health-promoting lives; in most African societies, health is the key to successful living, and personal empowerment is essential for family and community living and growing national development among younger people and for elders (Hirsch & Kademian, 2022).
Knowledge is power, and as such, local people in Africa must have access to quality education and awareness of information on healthy lifestyles and population health disease risk factors to live disease-free, overall better, and happy lives.
Second, identifying barriers and promoters are focused on individual education, community engagement, enhancing local governance through collectively based authorities, and changing sociocultural behaviors. Many other strategies combined within a national plan, program, and project are listed below. Case studies provide contextual overviews of the strategy discussed (Hirsch & Kademian, 2022).
5. Recommendations for Policy Makers and Stakeholders
Recommendations for policymakers include the incorporation of health promotion in the strategies and programs of national health promotion, especially resource allocation by the national government for health education (Health Organization, 2020).
Health, and developing and implementing strategies that promote the empowerment of community members to create and implement their activities. Public-private partnerships to facilitate access to potable water, nutrition education, and other health promotion activities.
The promotion of legislation that promotes a healthy lifestyle, especially in relation to the environmental determinants of health and the reorientation of food industries (Health Organization, 2020).
The development of monitoring and evaluation strategies when developing policies and programs to address health promotion activities and resources. Recommendations for stakeholders include ways in which stakeholders can become involved, including taxing unhealthy goods and the promotion of equity in resource allocation and access.
Policymakers from a range of sectors, including finance, health, education, and agriculture, aim for a community with low rates of disease, disability, and death. This will allow the optimization of social and economic development through more people engaging in activities that require a level of fitness benefit.
Community members want to live full lives free of avoidable morbidity and premature mortality. However, in some countries, and for some reason, people are not reaching these goals. The National Department of Health, in conjunction with nongovernmental organization partners, has developed strategies and programs that enable people to take control of their health.
In order for this to work, policymakers must incorporate health promotion strategies into finance, education, agriculture, women and child development, and other national policies and programs (Health Organization, 2020).
6. Conclusion
We argue that fostering healthy lifestyles in Africa is a desirable, achievable, and indispensable goal. Despite challenges identified—lack of awareness and complacency, violence and insecurity, and notions of cultural inferiority and racial essentialism—we believe that promising strategies are at hand.
Accordingly, we recommended that transcendent actions be taken at both the micro (personal) and macro (societal) levels. At the macro level, we recommended that the governmental sector make the improvement of quality of life an urgent policy priority, and we offered an agenda of specific policy and community-based programs to achieve this goal.
At the personal level, we suggested that people in Africa and elsewhere reassess their priorities in life, nourish family and relationships, and take herbs, prebiotics, and probiotics to improve their health.
Africa and Africans in the diaspora must supplement healthcare partners with big pharmaceutical companies, the military, the private sector, and international organizations to curb insecurity and make Africa safe for all. A pan-African approach to helping each other, regardless of political boundaries, is needed.
We recommend that this essay serve as a knowledge base for scholars who want to appreciate the complex issues that need to be surmounted to expand lifestyle research to the African continent and probe current understanding.
We also encourage colleagues in the policy space and other stakeholder groups to draw from these findings as they forge research and a policy roadmap forward. It is hoped that ongoing research and policy innovation will enable us to continue mapping and investigating the countryside of the African human ecosystem such that a living record is created that tracks the changing health landscapes and their inhabitants over human generations to come.
REFERENCES
An, J., & Gregg, W. E. (2022). The lancet diabetes & endocrinology home page. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/home
Baker, P. (2021). Bulletin of the World Health Organization. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/publications/journals/bulletin/
Chukwu, N. O., & Edeh, C. O. (2023). Archives of Current Research International. https://journalacri.com/index.php/ACRI
Gershman, J. (2020). ALA issues the first revision to standards for incarcerated and detained individuals. Library Journal. https://www.libraryjournal.com/
Van Ginneken, K. J., & Musango, L. (2017). The State of Health System(s) in Africa: Challenges and opportunities. The Modern Era. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7123888/
Hirsch, S. J., & Kademian, M. S. (2022). A sustainable livelihoods framework for the 21st Century. World Development. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22000882
Health Organization, W. (2020). Ending the neglect to attain Sustainable Development https://www.paho.org/en/documents/ending-neglect-attain-sustainable-development-goals-road-map-neglected-tropical-diseases
Full Article in below link
The Picture is an amazing choice