“Hypertension, obesity, stroke, and chronic kidney illness trends in Indonesia continue to rise: In the past year, the prevalence of hypertension rose from 25.8% to 34.1%, obesity from 14.8% to 21.8%; diabetes from 6.9% to 8.5%; stroke from 7% to 10.9%; chronic kidney illness from 2% to 3.8%. The percentage of noncommunicable diseases as causes of death are: stroke (19.4%), cardiovascular disease (14.4%), cancer (13.5%), and diabetes and its complications (6.2%) . Hypertension, hyperglycemia, and obesity are the top three risk factors that cause other diseases. The biggest expenditure made by our BPJS Kesehatan health security in the past year is for catastrophic diseases, at IDR 17 trillion – that’s IDR 7.7 trillion for cardiovascular disease, IDR 3.1 trillion for cancer, IDR 1.9 trillion for stroke, and IDR 1.6 trillion for kidney failure.”
According to the World Stroke Organization, stroke risk factors are actually preventable. Here are the global causes of stroke: 1 of 5 cases is caused by obesity, 1 of 4 because of insufficient consumption of fruit and vegetables, 1 of 10 because of smoking, and 1 of 13 because of alcohol consumption. As for Indonesia, the percentages of stroke among sufferers 15 years old and older by cause are: 33.5% because of lack of physical activity; 95.5% because of insufficient consumption of fruit and vegetables for at least 10 years; 29.3% because of smoking (with a prevalence of 9.1% teen smokers liable to suffer a stroke); and 3.3% because of alcohol consumption.
What we need to do is prevent the risk factors to avoid stroke. To repeat: 50% of strokes worldwide are caused by hypertension, 25% is caused by high LDL levels, 9% because of irregular heartbeat; while in Indonesia, 34.1% of strokes among citizens 15 years or older are caused by hypertension, 9% have high LDL levels, and 3.5% suffer from heart problems.