Omar Badjie, a Gambian medical doctor, has said that about 34% of all deaths in The Gambia last are related to non-communicable or chronic diseases.

Non-communicable disease is a disease that is not transmissible directly from one person to another but its infection could be detrimental if action is not taken urgently.

And there are 50 different types of non-communicable diseases but cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases and cancers are deemed the worst and quickest to kill people.

Speaking to Gambiana in an exclusive interview on Friday, Dr Badjie who doubles as the programme manager for World Diabetes Foundation in the Gambia said: “last year about 34% of all deaths are related to non communicable disease in the Gambia.”

He called for attitudinal change towards the type of food people consume and warned that non-communicable diseases are ‘killer’ diseases that needed to be tackle urgently in the country.

According to him, lack of physical exercise also caused one to develop non-communicable disease but urged people to venture into physical exercise of walking distance and avoids eating foods that will harm their health and wellbeing.

Meanwhile according to a World Health Organization report, chronic or non-communicable disease killed 41 million people every year globally.

It said that 15 million people die from non-communicable diseases between the ages of 30 and 69 and 85% of the deaths occur in the middle- income countries.

In 2018, world leaders joined a global campaign drive to beat non-communicable diseases across the world.

And Gambia has benefited from a four-year project to fight against non-communicable diseases in the country.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba