Cardiovascular risk factors in the Maghreb. A systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the distribution of cardiovascular risk factors in Maghreb's countries. METHODS: It is a systematic review including articles and reports that applied the WHO "STEPwise" approach, or a similar approach, studying cardiovascular risk factors in the Maghreb countries: Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Mauritania between 2004 and 2018. RESULTS: We selected five articles, a report for each country. The prevalence of smoking was between 13.4% (12.2-14.6) in Morocco and 29.4% (28.3-30.4%) in Tunisia. 50.6% of the population of Mauritania had insufficient physical activity. The prevalence of high blood pressure was highest in Libya (40.6%) The prevalence of obesity was up to 41.1% (37-43.3) for women and 21.4% (19-23.8) in men in Libya. The prevalence of diabetes mellitus was between 10.6% (9.7-11.6) in Morocco and 16.4% (14.7-19.1) in Libya. CONCLUSION: The distribution of cardiovascular risk factors in the Maghreb countries shows that the level of cardiovascular risk is high, particularly in the central Maghreb. This attests to the fairly advanced epidemiological transition related to the rapid modernization of the Arab countries, hence the importance of launching an integrated project for the fight against cardiovascular diseases based on the global experience.

Youth violence in Maghreb countries. A systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence, risk factors as well as consequences of exposure to violence among youth in Maghreb countries. METHODS: This is a systematic review. The documentary request was done on 2 October 2019 and no filters were used. It examined all scientific publications indexed in Medline database via Pubmed using the following search equation: ("Violence"[Mesh] OR "suicide"[Mesh] OR "crime victims"[Mesh] OR "Child abuse"[Mesh]) AND ("Young Adult"[Mesh] OR "Adolescent"[Mesh] OR "Child"[Mesh]) AND ("Tunisia"[Mesh] OR "Algeria"[Mesh] OR "Morocco"[Mesh] OR "Libya"[Mesh] OR "Mauritania"[Mesh]). RESULTS: A total of 16 articles were included. Most of them (68.7%) were published in Uganda, United States and England. The most common type of violence was physical abuse (43.8%). Adolescent boys were mostly affected by physical violence. However, girls were more exposed to emotional violence (63% vs 51%). The suicide rate increased after the social and political Tunisian revolution in 2011. Parental conflicts, school failure and social problems were more frequent among victims of violence. In addition, tobacco and alcohol use, substance abuse and suicide attempt (ranging from 5% to 38%) were higher. CONCLUSION: Exposure to violence, especially emotional and physical, is becoming more frequent among youth in Maghreb countries. There is an urgent need for future survey to provide temporal data about violence, especially sexual abuse, in order to implement more effective prevention strategies.