JOHANNESBURG — The medical experts gathered from across Africa were here to talk about a continentwide epidemic, but it wasn’t AIDS or malaria — it was diabetes, and the bad habits that often bring it on.
A growing urban middle class is defying the image of Africa as poor, underfed and under-medicated. And with the comforts of middle-class life, afflictions familiar in the West are making inroads here too — obesity, diabetes, lung cancer, strokes, heart disease.
A continent that traditionally traveled on foot or by bicycle now increasingly rides cars and buses. More time is spent at desks. Elevators are replacing stairs.
White-collar Africans are discovering the gym.
“In the past, we used to exercise without knowing it,” South Africa’s health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, reminded the recent conference.
“You would walk a long distance to school. You would walk a long distance to work. You would walk a long distance to the shops,” Motsoaledi, 52, recalled of his childhood. “But now I’m an African whose child is dropped at the gate of the school in a car, then picked up at the end of the day and put in front of the TV.”
In West Africa, Cameroonians who once ate rice only as a holiday treat are loading their plates with it, crowding out the vegetables their parents ate. Down south, Malawians say fast foods are a status symbol.
In Nairobi, Kenya, a sobering chat with his doctor got 27-year-old Robel Demissi to the gym.
“My blood pressure had gone up, a bit more than last year, and my weight was 8 kilograms (17 pounds) more. That’s a lot,” he said.
Demissi, a pilot for a Kenyan airline, blames his weight gain on junk food and a workload that leaves little time for exercise. But lest he flunk his physical and lose his flying license, he has taken up a Thai martial art and has lost 15 pounds in two months.
“I never used to have the time to train,” he said, “but now I have two motivating factors to make the time: my job and my life.”
“These countries are really faced with a double burden,” said Dr. Timothy Armstrong, an expert on chronic diseases with the U.N. World Health Organization.
How, he wonders, is a doctor treating AIDS or malaria to find time to lecture patients about watching their weight?
