Ademola Denloye, an expert on men’s health says hypertension, diabetes are the leading causes of death in Nigerian men, noting that societal pressure also reduces the tendency for men to seek medical attention.
However, Nigeria’s average life expectancy rate is one of the lowest in the world at 52.2 years, and men have shorter life expectancies than women.
Denloye, a medical practitioner at Men’s Clinic and medical director, St Luke’s Hospital, says there is also a growing trend in the increase of prostate cancer and sexual issues on erectile dysfunctions, premature ejaculation and sometimes psychosexual disorders.
This expert spoke on Doctors on Air on Wednesday on Classic FM 97.3 hosted by Pamela Jackson-Ajayi, founder and managing director, Synlab Nigeria, on the topic ‘Men’s Health’
According to Denloye, mostly hypertension and diabetes are the major killer in Nigerian men today, and lifestyle, the stress of work, dietary habits and sometimes genetic loading were also contributors to the cause.
According to Denloye, hypertension is simply an elevated blood pressure, as the first number, called systolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in your blood vessels when your heart beats, and the second number called diastolic blood pressure measures the pressure in your blood vessels when your heart rests between beats.
“Today, the feature is if your systolic is over 140 and the diastolic is over 90, then you are hypertensive, and so we want you to keep your blood pressure under 140,” he said.
He further said basically we know the kind of society we deal with and it was much more difficult to get things done, stating that it was important to focus on men’s health because “basically, men are usually the breadwinners and when something goes wrong it leads to quite a lot of economic hardship.
“The average Nigerian’s man behaviour is not seeking medical attention at the appropriate time, even just to screen for hypertension. Men’s health-seeking behaviour in Nigeria is not up to par.”
However, the expert also said that basically in their clinic, they found that about 50 percent of people who come in for consultation had a corresponding mental health issues, stating that most of them would not come directly opening up.
“There is really more problem to this, people have to be aware that when they have issues there are places they can seek help,” he said.
Nigeria’s healthcare needs total reformation, apart from its structure and there is need to understand that we need to improve health-seeking behaviours, he said.
Meanwhile, the host, Jackson-Ajayi, also contributed saying that she believed that genetic testing were really the future of medicine, explaining that with genetic testing disease could be prevented, as there were primary, secondary and tertiary preventive care.
She explained further that the common one people always do was the secondary, which prevents it very early, while the tertiary prevention was when you actually have the problem, but try to prevent it from complication.
“The primary prevention is when genetic come, we need to modify our lifestyle and stop this from happening,” she said.
