Kyrgyzstan annually loses 17 billion soms due to non-communicable diseases (NCD). Iren Isakova, a representative of the State Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance Department of the Ministry of Health of the Kyrgyz Republic, announced at a seminar on the STEPS study.
According to her, this amount consists of two components. Direct losses are the costs of treatment of diseases, and indirect ones are due to the loss of labor force and a decrease in labor productivity.
«The main non-communicable diseases that pose the greatest danger and are the main cause of 80 percent of all cases of premature death of the population, disability, morbidity with temporal disability in Kyrgyzstan are diseases such as cardiovascular, oncological, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes,» she noted.
The STEPS study aims to study the prevalence and monitoring of trends in NCD risk factors in order to plan program activities and policies to reduce them in the country. It will cover all regions and up to 2,800 households. The survey will be conducted among people aged 18 to 69 years. It will start on May 1 and will last until the end of the month.
