The machines were distributed at the launch of a "500,000 WAD Heart Health Project" at the opening of a "Health Ministries International Congress 2024" in Accra.

The ECG machines will enable members to detect early any heart complication or signs that could greatly affect their health or lead to a loss of life.

The Congress was on the theme: "Comprehensive Health Ministries: The Key to the Heart of the Broken World".

Dr Paul Amo-Kyeremeh, Health Ministries Director, WAD, SDA Church, said the step had become necessary because more than 25,000 of their members had died within the past nine years within their territory in Africa out of heart-related diseases.

Out of a 3,250 Adventists screened by the church in the Northern Ghana, he said 64 per cent of the respondents had heart-related diseases.

Speaking on death tolls, he said the SDA in Ghana in the first quarter of 2015 to 2023, had had 10,930 deaths out of a total of 403,879.

In Nigeria, Dr Amo-Kyeremeh said a total of 8,114 Adventists died out of 301,074 members while 3,313 had died out of a total of 130,163 in Cameroon between 2015 and 2023.
He said a significant number of the deaths were due to heart-related conditions.

The WAD Division as part of its steps to control the deaths, he said, was launching a health reform and lifestyle club, Adventists private health institutions operators' network, health and development association, comprehensive health ministries and Adventists health professionals network.

"We live in a world where diseases have made the lives of millions of people hopeless and jobless. Yes, we are in a world in which we are not aware when the next outbreak of deadly diseases shall be announced," he noted.

Dr Peter Landless, Health Ministries Director, General Conference, SDA, said South Africa and other African countries in the 1970s hardly saw a black or an African with a heart condition or on admission for that matter.

"So, whenever it happened, they would record. However, urbanization and its fast foods, hot dogs and others are making people now eat more than they sleep or exercise.

"There's a knowledge-behaviour disconnect, because people know that leading good and healthy lifestyles is important, yet they don't do it," he added.

Dr Seth Adu Agyemang, Medical Director at the New Leaf Hospital, bemoaned the alarming figures of cardiovascular diseases in the Church and across the continent.

Out of over 19,000 autopsy cases conducted by students at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra some years ago, 30 per cent were due to heart diseases, he said.

Out of more than 3,000 members of Adventist Church screened in some parts of the country for varied health conditions, he said about 70 per cent had a problem with their heart, adding: "Why should these happen? Why should we sit down for our people to die?"

"All these indicate the need for the project to be born and I believe with the equipment, we should be able to screen every church member above 15 years to know what's wrong with them to be able to control the conditions that is taken us into graves prematurely," he added.

Dr Peter Yeboah, the Executive Director, Christian Health Association of Ghana, said the heart was the engine of life and responsible for pumping blood throughout the body while supplying oxygen and nutrients to tissues and essential organs in the body.

Cardiovascular diseases, he said, were however the leading causes of death globally, taking lives of 17.9 million people in 2019 and accounting for about 32 per cent of all global deaths according to the WHO.

Dr Yeboah said unfortunately over three-quarters of the deaths were in the low and middle-income countries.

"So, the theme shows the Church is united in its mission to make a transformative change to detect, treat, prevent and protect against health conditions, while promoting heart healthy lifestyles such as sleeping well, desisting from smoking and alcohol intake," he said.

He called for an investment in health and wellness infrastructure as well as research and development to protect people from health complications.