WSU hosted, Professor Benedicta Nkeh-Chungag, on the enquiring topic: “Are cardiovascular diseases a cause for concern in people of African ancestry?”
Professor Nkeh-Chungag is a Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, a seasoned academic and research scholar, and a full Professor of Physiology at WSU.
She is a cardiovascular researcher who has covered epidemiology and African medicinal plants.
“More than 1.2 billion people in the world suffer from hypertension and of this number, two-thirds are in developing countries and we are part of these developing countries. More than 46% of those do not even know they are hypertensive,” she said.
The lecture provided her with a platform to share her past research in hypertension and introduce new ideas to a diverse academic and non-academic audience.
“Hypertension is the most important cause of cardiovascular diseases and it is in its own right a cardiovascular disease. If we change the prevalence of hypertension, we also change the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases,” added Nkeh-Chungag.
She further elaborated that if high blood pressure is controlled, there will be very few incidents of cardiovascular diseases. The exact causes of high blood pressure are not known, but several things may play a role, such as obesity, smoking and lack of activity.
Nkeh-Chungag said that it is hard to talk about hypertension and not talk about obesity as it is one of the risk factors.
“A study that was recently done in Africa shows that South Africa has the highest prevalence of obese children in Africa, she said.
Addressing her audience, which included her family, friends, and other guests, Nkeh-Chungag asked the audience “So what is the impact of obesity on our population?”
She further went deep to analyse the system used to measure the Body Mass Index (BMI) and questioned its accuracy.
“Universal cut-off points of BMI and waist circumference are not appropriate for use worldwide given ethnic or population specific differences in disease risk for any particular anthropometric measure. However, there may be a general consistency in cut-off points or waist-hip ratio for predicting cardiovascular diseases,” said Nkeh-Chungag.
She is an NRF-rated researcher, a scholar of the Organisation for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), and a Fellow of the International Hypertension Society who has published extensively.
Still addressing her audience, Nkeh-Chungag said, “At a very young age we were told our mother had hypertension. I promised her to find a cure for it. She had three strokes and unfortunately, she could not come out of the third one.”
She further added that before her mother passed on, she called her while at university and reminded her of the promise she made to find a cure and she stood there thinking about how to go about doing that.
The presentation of her Inaugural Lecture was a momentous milestone in her academic career as a full professor.
Nkeh-Chungag concluded her presentation by asking her audience after all the research she presented before them if they think cardiovascular diseases are a cause for concern in people of African ancestry.
- Anita Roji