Last June, a non-communicable diseases mass campaign took place in the car-free zone of Kigali. This initiative was funded by BTC through its health sector programme “Ubuzima Burambye” and its component on urban health.
“The programme supports initiatives taken by the City of Kigali (CoK) to fight against non-communicable diseases (NCD) and the associated risk factors. Indeed, there is a continued rising burden of NCDs particularly in urban areas which represents an additional challenge with major implications” explains Public Health Expert Veronique Zinnen.

By financing an annual mass campaign, Ubuzima Burambye addresses one of the challenges of rapid growing urbanization and contributes to early detection and prevention of NCDs. Patricie Mukangarambe Director of the Public Health and Environment Unit of the CoK explains: “Each year, the City of Kigali, in partnership with the Rwanda Biomedical Centre and with the funding of BTC, is organizing a campaign to mobilize the population on early detection and prevention of NCDs and associated risk factors. The campaign lasts for one week and enables us to examine and counsel between 3000 and 5000 people.”

NCDs, a major health challenge

NCDs are one of the major health and development challenges of the 21st century. General public awareness regarding risk factors, prevention and early detection of NCDs is essential. If nothing is done, the human, social
and economic costs of NCDs will continue to grow and overwhelm the capacity of countries to address them.

“The problem with the main NCDs - like diabetes & hypertension - is that they are not symptomatic and people do not get themselves spontaneously tested unless complications occurred. Those “silent” diseases do lots of damages and it is why we support this early detection and prevention campaign. We try also to raise awareness on risks associated with NCDs such as overweight, obesity, alcohol consumption, tobacco, etc. This is a very important activity” states Veronique Zinnen.

Promoting healthy lifestyle

The theme of the 2017 campaign was Promote healthy life style to prevent NCDs”. Throughout the campaign, free screening and counselling activities took place in the car free zone of Kigali. The screening for risk factors such
as overweight and obesity (BMI), blood sugar and blood pressure, detecting diabetes and hypertension was done in collaboration with the Rwanda
Association of Diabetes and Cardio-vascular foundation and conducted by the Rwanda Pharmaceutical Students Association. Dr. Agarwal's Eye Hospital provided equipment and staff for the measurement of visual acuity and intraocular pressure.

Free counselling was also provided in order to guide patients to adequate health care facilities. The patients who had abnormal measures were referred to hospitals. In addition, prevention messages were broadcasted on
the radio and disseminated in district hospitals in order to reach more than the population living in Kigali. We estimate that around 3000 people were reached by the 2017 campaign.