Health & Ethnicity

Ethno-Culture
Health & Ethnicity

A look at diseases that affect people of African descent

Are you more susceptible to certain diseases because of your African descent? Yes, you are. Just like people of other ethnicities, who are more prone to certain other illnesses. Every ethnicity is more vulnerable to certain illnesses compared to others.

The health problems that people of African descent should be more careful about are heart diseases, cancer, stroke, lung diseases, and sickle cell anaemia. The good news is that, although genetics plays a part, it is not always the main reason. There are many other contributing factors such as environment and lifestyle that can be controlled to defend against such problems.

Heart Disease

According to the Center for Disease Control, people of African descent are 1.5 times more likely to get a heart disease than Caucasians. The American Heart Association says that for African-Americans, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in both males and females, age 20 and older.

African-Canadians are also 1.3 times more likely to die from a heart disease. African-Canadians die more often from heart diseases than other racial groups because of the prevalence of smoking, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. In the case of heart disease, environmental factors seem to be more to blame than genetics.

It is important to note here is that the research available is primarily based on data from Caucasians, and does not completely apply to people of African ancestry. Although there is increasingly more data available for people of African descent, the level of data is insufficient to help lower the incidence of heart disease.

Cancer

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the African North Americans. People of African descent have more susceptibility to certain types of cancer compared to other ethnic groups.

A study from the University of Washington showed that African-Canadian men are over 60% more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than other ethnic groups. They are also more than twice as likely to die from the disease. The risk of getting prostate cancer is double for men whose father or brother has had the disease. About 10% of all instances of prostate cancer are due to an inherited genetic mutation.

Dark-skinned individuals, particularly people of African descent, have high mortality rates for melanoma, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. The problem stems, in large part, from a lack of knowledge about skin cancer. Many people think that the darker your skin, the less likely you are to develop skin cancer. And often, cancer develops on parts of the body that are not readily exposed to the sun. This misconception leads to late diagnoses, and often mortality, particularly in African-Canadians and African-Americans.

Among African-Canadian women, breast, lung, and colorectal cancers are most prevalent. The Canadian Cancer Society says that primary risk factors include smoking, poor diet, obesity, as well as failure to screen for cervical and breast cancer.

There is insufficient information as to why African-Canadian women have such a high instance of these cancers compared to other racial groups. Some social factors may include poverty, tumours that are detected at a later (more advanced) stage, different belief systems about medical treatments, fear of talking about cancer, or lack of trust in the medical system.

Stroke

The third leading cause of death in African North Americans is stroke. The Heart and Stoke Foundation of Canada says that both social and individual risks play a role in an individual having a stroke. It also recognizes that people of African descent are more likely to develop this illness than other ethnic groups.

The risk factors leading to stroke are similar to those of heart disease. Gender plays a role. More women die of strokes than men, in spite of the fact that women are less likely to have a stroke before menopause. Other factors include smoking, lack of exercise, stress, alcohol, and diet. Sickle cell disease is the most important cause of ischemic stroke among African North American children.

Eighty per cent of Canadians have at least one risk factor for developing heart disease or stroke, including physical inactivity, being overweight, and high blood pressure, showing that environmental factors have a strong impact on a person’s chances of having a stroke.

Lung Diseases

Lung disease is a problem for people of African descent around the world, but for very different reasons depending on geographical location. A 2002 study by the American Lung Association showed that 71% of people with African ancestry live in countries that violate US government air pollution standards. In the United States, on average African-Americans live closer to industrial areas where levels of air pollution are high. In 2003, African-Americans accounted for over 25% of the over 1,000 deaths attributed to asthma. In 2004, over 3.5 million African-Americans had asthma.

In Canada, and the rest of North America, Africans are more likely to get Sarcoidosis, which is a chronic condition that may affect almost any part of the body, especially the lungs and respiratory tract. However, in other parts of the world, people of African ancestry are less susceptible to Sarcoidosis, showing that the phenomenon is strictly North American. Environmental factors seem to be the most influential in developing lung disease and related respiratory ailments. Smoking is often a big contributing and complicating factor with lung disease.

Sickle-cell Anaemia

Many people who live on the continent of Africa are affected by sickle-cell Anaemia. Often, people associate sickle-cell anaemia only with Africans, but the fact is that sickle-cell anaemia is always common in areas where malaria is (or was) prevalent. Malaria attacks normal red blood cells, but cannot affect sickle blood cells. People with sickle-cell anaemia are not affected by malaria, so they survive to pass the sickle-cell trait on to their children.

However, even in Africa, sickle-cell anaemia only occurs in certain regions. In South Africa, sickle-cell anaemia is not very common because the mosquitoes that carry malaria are not present. On the other hand, the Orchomeno people in central Greece have a rate of sickle-cell anaemia that is twice that of Africans. This shows that sickle-cell anaemia has no racial basis, but appears as a defence against malaria.

Although our ethnicity clearly influences our health, the impact of environment and lifestyle must never be discounted.