The Significant Risk Factor for Chronic Disease in Benghazi, Libya

Chronic disease has been around as long as humans. But now, in most industrialized nations and in many developing countries, they predominate among the leading causes of death. For many years’ public health practitioners have recognized the increasing burden of chronic illness. In general, the disease is defined as a pathological process, most often physical as in throat infection, or cancer of the bronchus, sometimes undetermined in origin, as in schizophrenia. The quality which identifies disease is some deviation from a biological norm. This study aims to describe—for the first time—the significant risk factor for chronic disease in Benghazi, Libya. A cross-sectional observational study was conducted, adopting the structured face to face interviewing survey technique. Over 220 patients visited one of the recruited polyclinics in Benghazi during the three-month study period, either to refill their prescribed medication(s) or follow up their chronic diseases. A study in Benghazi was conducted between June and August (2016) on sample population (220) comprising subjects mainly aged more than 60 years (45.5%), females (66.4%) and without level of education (41.4%), and mainly housewife (51.4%) of overweight and obesity was found to be 46.8%. Overweight was more prevalent in females than males. The prevalence with an increase in age up to 60 years, and diabetes was 62.7%, with regard to smoking percent, the smokers were 10.5% and hypertension was 70.5%. The current study shows that experiencing an increase in the prevalence of many risk factors for chronic diseases is in urgent need of interventions to reduce the prevalence of these risk factors and to deal with the chronic diseases to which they contribute.