Chronic kidney disease in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Infectious diseases—led by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria—are still the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa; however, the contribution of noncommunicable diseases to morbidity and mortality in the region has grown over the past 30 years. These emerging non-communicable diseases in Africa have been attributed at least in part to the improving longevity, urbanisation, and modernisation of cultures in the region. Cardiometabolic diseases have been suggested to be the leading contributor to deaths due to non-communicable diseases in sub-Saharan Africa,1 with high and rapidly increasing incidences of these cardiometabolic diseases reported across diverse settings in the region. For instance, the International Diabetes Federation projects that Africa is set to witness the highest relative increase in diabetes, by 156% between 2017 and 2045, with the total population of adults with diabetes increasing from 16 million to 41 million people.2 Populations in sub-Saharan Africa have also been shown to have a high prevalence of hypertension (48%) and obesity (20%)