Prevalence of chronic diseases risk factors among persons attending six administrative courses in the Army Training Command area in 2006.

BACKGROUND The chronic diseases prevalence tends to increase worldwide and the risk factors are identified and reduced. OBJECTIVE To survey the prevalence of chronic diseases risk factors among persons attending 6 administrative courses in the Army Training Command area in 2006 and compare with results of the former study. MATERIAL AND METHOD All persons attending the 6 courses were asked to answer the questionnaires. The SPSS for Windows version 10 computer program was used for data analysis. RESULTS There were 445 respondents. Most of them were men (87.2%), married (75.9%), finished a bachelor degree or higher (93.9%), military personnel (97.5%) and the average age was 43.7 +/- 5.6 years. The prevalence percentages of smoking, alcohol drinking, physical inactivity, preferred high fat food, preferred sweet food, preferred salty food, obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes and hyperstress was 18.7, 13.5, 56.6, 41.9, 20.9, 11.0, 35.4, 14.4, 38.5, 4.3 and 18.7, respectively. Most of the prevalence of risk factors, except smoking, was not decreased when compared to the former study in the similar group of persons in 2004. CONCLUSION The prevalence of chronic diseases risk factors in this group was high and seemed difficult to reduce. There should be appropriate surveillance and intervention programs to reduce these risks to prevent disease in this special group.