Feasibility of screening for heart failure in Africa: barriers and facilitators in a low-resourced setting.

Heart failure (HF) is of worldwide public health concern, yet with higher morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries compared with high-income nations, posing a significant burden to the already overstrained and unprepared health systems in many countries.In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), while community level data is sparse, a number of hospital-based HF studies have been conducted, highlighting the distinct presentation of HF when compared with data from other regions of the world. It is imperative that more data on the precise nature of HF in Africa are obtained, but multiple barriers exist to obtaining reliable data. In the present commentary, we discuss characteristics of HF in Africa, their potential impact on conducting screening studies at the community level and describe the strategies that we have incorporated in the MAPUTO-HF (The Maputo Antecedents, Prevalence and Urban Transition Of Heart Failure Project: feasibility of a population-based study in a low-resource African setting) study, a feasibility study that was designed to overcome these barriers and facilitate HF research in SSA in both a rural and urban setting.