MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION IN SOUTHERN RHODESIA BY

Myocardial infarction in Southern Rhodesia affects almost exclusively people of European descent, and to a much lesser extent the small Asian and Coloured (predominantly Eurafrican) communities. Thus out of a total of 608 carefully studied cases of cardiac disease admitted during three years to the Mpilo Hospital (for Africans) in Bulawayo, there was not a single unequivocal case of myocardial infarction (Baldachin, 1961). Working at Harare Hospital in Salisbury, Gelfand (1961) found no case of myocardial infarction in 70 consecutive African patients, aged 60 years and upwards, suffering from heart disease. There are no country-wide statistics available for the incidence of the disease among Coloured and Asian subjects, but analysis of the reports of the City Medical Officer of Health for Bulawayo over the past ten years indicates an annual crude death rate from arteriosclerotic and degenerative heart disease among the two communities combined of 0f25 per 1000 out of a current population at risk of 3200. This represents a frequency of less than one-quarter that of the Europeans. SUBJECTS AND METHODS This study is based on 370 personal cases, all white, whose records are considered adequate enough for profitable evaluation. These patients were seen either in hospital or private consultin