Perspectives on common chronic diseases in adult cancer patients in South Africa

ABSTRACT

There is a rising noncommunicable disease (NCD) burden in low- and middle-income countries. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) bears a higher burden than the global average with South Africa (SA) enduring the highest regional burden. SA among other southern African countries also bears a high prevalence of HIV and other chronic communicable diseases. Having a perspective on common chronic diseases in the ever-increasing numbers of adult cancer patients in SA will inform our understanding of approaches to better manage them. This commentary reviews regional and national studies and data of low- and middle-income countries and particularly SA on the chronic infectious and NCD multimorbidity burden among adult cancer patients. It also reflects on the considerable health system challenges of managing discordant multimorbidity among adult cancer patients within the SA Public Health System. Despite the critical need to better manage the growing MM burden in general and particularly the high prevalence of discordant multimorbidity among cancer patients, there is a dearth of research into MM management generally and in LMICs particularly.

KEYWORDS:

• Multimorbidity
• noncommunicable diseases
• cancer
• low- and middle-income countries
• South Africa

Responsible Editor Stig Wall

Responsible Editor Stig Wall

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the authors who provided the information that we utilised in this commentary.

Authors contributions

MJ – Made substantial contributions to the conception; design of the work; searching for literature; drafted the work and substantively revised it.

OAA – Made substantial contributions to the commentary; and substantively revised the work.

WM – Made substantial contributions to the commentary; and substantively revised it.

PR – Made substantial contributions to the commentary; and substantively revised the work.

HC – Made substantial contributions to the commentary; and substantively revised the work.

NM – Made substantial contributions to the commentary; and substantively revised the work.

SAN – Made substantial contributions to the conception; design of the work; and substantively revised it.

All the authors approved the submitted version and they agreed both to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Paper context

In this commentary, we reported on the multimorbidity burden among patients with non-AIDS-defining cancers in South Africa. This is significant because the development and recording of individualised management plans and the use of electronic records to facilitate communication between different providers dealing with patients are fundamental requirements in multimorbidity management.

Additional information

Funding

The article was funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute, R01CA250012 and R01CA19262, the South African Medical Research Council for the Centre for Research on Common Epithelial Cancers and DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.