21 Sep 2022

Ministry of Health advises Batswana to conduct regular health check-ups in order to ensure that any conditions they may have are detected early enough to take action.

In an interview with BOPA yesterday, chief public relations officer in the Ministry of Health, Dr Christopher Nyanga said regular health checks were a preventative key factor to building a healthy future.

Dr Nyanga observed that lately people had been collapsing and sdying instantly while others died in their sleep. 

Dr Nyanga said although the conditions appear more prominent now as the world was recovering from COVID-19, those incidentss were not new to the society.

“They have always been there even before COVID-19, there is currently no solid evidence linking long COVID with sudden death,” he said.  

He further said the conditions were common not only in Botswana, but across the world.

However, Dr Nyanga said there had been a few case reports in medical literature of patients who presented with cardiac arrest that culminated in death following COVID-19, saying in a nutshell, the evidence was still evolving and there was a lot that the medical  personnel was yet to learn.

He said some possible causes of the sudden deaths included severe shortness of breath, heart attack, stroke, pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the blood vessels of the lung), arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythm) and related complications.

He, therefore, urged the public to go for regular health check-ups even if they were not feeling ill.

He stressed that for people to suddenly collapse or die in sleep, ‘they would most likely be having some pre-existing health conditions, including non-communicable diseases, diagnosed or undiagnosed, that predispose them to sudden death.”

He said regular health check-ups would increased the chances of the potential disease to be detected as early as possible and the patient given relevant treatment before the ailment worsened.  

Dr Nyanga advised Batswana to eat healthy and adopt active lifestyles as most of the conditions were caused by lack of exercise and unhealthy diets. Ends