Geographic and Sociodemographic Disparities in Cardiovascular Risk in Burkina Faso: Findings from a Nationwide Cross-Sectional Survey

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk assessment is a critical step in the current approach to the primary prevention of CVD, particularly in low-income countries such as Burkina Faso. In this study, we aimed to assess the geographic and sociodemographic disparities of the ten-year cardiovascular risk in Burkina Faso. Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of the data from the first nationwide survey using the World Health Organization (WHO) STEPwise approach. Ten-year cardiovascular risk was determined using the WHO 2019 updated risk chart (WHO risk) as main outcome, and the Framingham risk score (FRS) and the Globorisk chart for secondary outcomes. We performed a modified Poisson regression model using a generalized estimating equation to examine the association between CVD risk and sociodemographic characteristics. Results: A total of 3081 participants aged 30 to 64 years were included in this analysis. The overall age and sex-standardized mean of absolute ten-year cardiovascular risk assessed using the WHO risk chart was 2.5% (95% CI: 2.4-2.6), ranging from 2.3% (95% CI: 2.2- 2.4) in Centre Est to 3.0% (95% CI: 2.8-3.2) in the Centre region. It was 4.6% (95% CI: 4.4- 4.8) for FRS and 4.0% (95% CI: 3.8-4.1) for Globorisk. Regarding categorized CVD risk (absolute risk >= 10%), we found out that the age and sex-standardized prevalence of elevated risk was 1.7% (95% CI: 1.3-2.1) for WHO risk, 10.4% (95% CI: 9.6-11.2) for FRS, and 5.9% (95% CI: 5.1-6.6) for Globorisk. For all of the three risk scores, elevated CVD risk was associated with increasing age, men, higher education, urban residence, and health region (Centre). Conclusion: We found sociodemographic and geographic inequalities in the ten-year CVD risk in Burkina Faso regardless of risk score used. Therefore, population-wide interventions are needed to improve detection and management of adult in the higher CVD risk groups in Burkina Faso.