WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Stanley Tom Asaku*, Juliet Kiguli and Judith Agaba Kiiza

ABSTRACT

Noncommunicable diseases like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and chronic respiratory diseases continue to pose significantly and disproportionally increasing health threats in low and middle income countries, perpetuated by social determinants of health among populations. There is emerging shift in the trend of occurrence and distribution of these chronic diseases within countries, not only by gender, socio-economic status, disability, ethnicity, but most recently by age- as higher proportions of all deaths due to noncommunicable diseases are occurring among individuals under the age of 70 years. Despite these important recent developments, it appears the problem remains a neglected public health issue that has not attracted equivalent attention, both among students and decision makers at Makerere University. We anticipate this situation is being maintained by insufficient empirical evidence due to limited research to that effect. We conducted a cross-sectional qualitative study aimed at gaining an in-depth understanding of the prevailing public health concerns, and risk perceptions of noncommunicable diseases among undergraduate female students at the Uganda’s most famous and oldest public University. This, was through focus group interviews, of which the raw data was subjected to a combination of constant comparison analysis and content analysis methods for analysing qualitative data. Indeed, participants identified a wide array of perceived health threats as prevailing public health concerns, of which depression ranked top, followed by gastric ulcers, abortion and unwanted pregnancies. Relationships related social factors like breaking with boyfriends, valentine mood and sexual relationships with sugar daddies for money- emerged as dominant exposure risk factors to those conditions. While the four major noncommunicable diseases ranked relatively low, this does not in any way imply that their actual risk was low. Instead, participants argued that these chronic conditions take long to manifest, and even though, there was less social stigma attributed to them. These results are essential for informing targeting of public health education, and behavioural change interventions to mitigate risks associated with the scourge of noncommunicable diseases.

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