The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that the cardiovascular disease claims about 17.5 million people every year. Although some cardiovascular diseases are more prevalent than depending on the continent, sub-Saharan Africa still makes up for a significant proportion of these deaths. The continent claims over a staggering 810,000 lives per year or 1 life every 40 seconds! Even more astounding is that most are preventable.

Roll over the each disease to see a description of the cardiovascular disease burden in sub-Saharan Africa.

	Inflammatory Heart Disease
	Cereberovascular Disease
	Rheumatic Heart Valve Disease
	Ischaemic Heart Disease
	Hypertensive Heart Disease

The socio-economic impact of cardiovascular disease is astonishing worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa , the impact is even more pronounced as the major diseases tend to affect the younger working patients. The Earth Institute at Columbia University , New York has estimated that in the developing nations of India , China , Brazil , South Africa and Mexico alone, 21 million future years of productivity are lost every year due to cardiovascular disease [1]. Financially, cardiovascular disease costs even in the Western World much more than infections or cancer combined. In USA , the direct and indirect costs are over €310 billion per year [2]. The situation in South Africa as early as 1991 was similar where cardiovascular disease cost the economy US $750 million. The actual cost was much more as this did not account for rehabilitation and follow up [3].

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