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Modernisation Diseases
More general studies on populations and their disease problems in Papua New Guinea are being conducted, all on a long-term basis. With urbanization, westernization and other changes in the social conditions and way of life of the people, long-term changes in disease patterns are already evident. To some extent all Papua New Guineans are affected, but for the urban elite western diseases have become a serious problem. Papua New Guinea faces a protracted epidemiological transition, with traditional infectious diseases, new infections (such as HIV/AIDS) and degenerative diseases of modernization all prevalent at the same time. The IMR had been monitoring the prevalence of diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some forms of cancer, and their known risk factors, in a few selected population groups, in order to detect warning signals of increasing prevalence. However, financial constraints have temporarily stopped this project. At the same time attempts to modify individual behaviour and lifestyle to avoid these new diseases, for example, in the reduction of cigarette smoking, are being made through established health and other agencies. The campaign against cigarette smoking has been one of the IMR's long-standing activities; the proceedings of a national workshop on smoking which we organized were published as an Institute monograph. Studies on diabetes have indicated that diabetes and glucose intolerance are becoming alarmingly prevalent in urban and some coastal communities, and already in rural highland areas there is early evidence of changes in tolerance to glucose. The Institute took part in an international collaborative study on hypertension and salt intake, which showed clearly that there was a relationship between them; reduction in salt intake would therefore be a sensible preventive public health measure in PNG.
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