Local health authorities disclosed that heart-related illnesses remain the top causes of death among residents last year.
Dr. Donabel Tubera-Panes, medical officer of the City Health Services Office (CHSO), claimed that the top 5 causes of death in the city last year are cardio-vascular disease, cancer, heart disease, pneumonia and COVID-19.
She pointed out that cardio-vascular disease, cancer and heart disease are all related to the functioning of the heart that is why heart-related diseases remain to be the top causes of death in the city.
The medical officer explained that there are so-called modifiable and non-modifiable causes of heart disease where the modifiable ones refer to those that could be changed such as lifestyle, diet and exercise while the non-modifiable ones or those that can no longer be changed are the genes, age and gender.
She claimed that females are not reportedly prone to heart ailment because of the estrogen that is present in them while males are prone to such illness because of the absence of estrogen.
In 2021, Panes reported that COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death in the city as it was still at the height of the pandemic where there were variants that mutated and emerged that caused surges in cases but the same illness dropped to the fifth leading cause of death in the city last year because of the drop in cases leading to the easing up of community quarantine restrictions.
According to him, another important thing to avoid to prevent individuals from contracting heart ailment is tobacco which actually complicates everything.
Last year, the CHSO recorded some 553 cardio-vascular disease-related deaths, 412 deaths due to cancer and 354 deaths because of heart ailment.
She stipulated that vascular diseases are those related to the malfunctioning of the veins supplying blood to the heart such as aneurysm while heart attack refers to the cardiac arrest caused by the malfunctioning of the heart in pumping blood to the veins and arteries.
