Multimorbidity of chronic diseases of lifestyle among South African adults

Introduction: the prevalence of non-communicable and chronic diseases has been on the increase globally and has been a major factor responsible for high morbidity and mortality. Multimorbidity of the chronic diseases in low/medium income countries should be a major concern for public health practitioners because of the communicable diseases they also battle with. This study was carried out to determine the prevalence of multimorbidity of chronic diseases of lifestyle (CDL) among adult South Africans. Methods: we employed General House Survey (GHS) data released by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) in December 2015 with a response rate was 90.5%. Data on diabetes mellitus, high cholesterol, stroke, heart attack/myocardial infarction, hypertension were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: the outcome of this secondary data analysis showed that about 16.3% of South Africans respondents aged 18 years and above had a single/or multiple CDL. The majority of the respondents with CDL were females (10.9%), older adults (9.4%), married (8.5%), of the black racial extract (11.9%), and reside in urban areas (3.4%). Also, high blood pressure (13.7%) was the most reported prevalent chronic disease while heart attack (1.1%) was the least reported chronic disease. The outcome of regression analysis after adjustment showed that gender (OR=0.56, CI=0.53-0.60, p<0.001), age [middle-aged adult (R=0.003, CI=0.003-0.004, p=0.001), older adult (R=0.25, CI=0.23-0.26, p=0.001)] and marital status [divorced (OR=1.55, CI=1.44-1.67, p<0.001), separated (OR=1.71, CI=1.46-2.00, p=0.001), single (R=1.88, CI=1.71-2.07, p=0.001)] were among the correlates of chronic diseases of lifestyle for the 1st step of the adjustment. However, White population group (OR=1.17, CI=0.96-1.41, p=0.113), residing in farm settlement (OR=0.99, CI=0.84-1.16, p=0.910) and all the sub-scales of educational status were not correlates of the CDLs for the 2nd adjustment of regression analysis. Conclusion: the findings of the study suggest that CDL is endemic among the South African population and that the most susceptible groups are the older adults, females, the married, the uneducated and the coloured individuals.