The only hospital in American Samoa has launched a new programme aimed at slowing the progression of non-communicable diseases.
The LBJ Hospital has established the Care Management Programme to help patients afflicted with diabetes, hypertension, obesity, renal diseases and other NCDs and to and to prevent early deaths.
The LBJ Hospital's CEO Mike Gerstenberger says many of the medical centre's patients do not take their medicine or follow doctors' orders and end up rushing to hospital when their illness has become too advanced for treatment.
"It's really important to the community that we figure out all of the approaches that will help us get a handle on the problems of hypertension and diabetes and obesity and end stage renal disease and heart disease. The toll that they are taking on families and on the economy is just obscene."
The LBJ Hospital's CEO Mike Gerstenberger
