Establishment of Health Clinics as Mass Screening and Referral Systems for Chronic Non-communicable Diseases in Primary Health Care

Background: this study aimed to establish a comprehensivescreening and referral system for chronic non-communicablediseases (cncd) in the routine primary health care, and todetermine the prevalence of diabetes, pre-diabetes, metabolicsyndrome, and dyslipidemia in adult population invited by publicannouncement to the health clinics in isfahan, iran.methods: this survey was conducted from march 2010, and thecurrent paper presents data obtained until november 2011. toprovide health services for prevention and control of cncds, withpriority of type2 diabetes mellitus, health clinics were establishedin different parts of isfahan city with a population of approximately2,100,000 in iran. the general populations aged 30 years and abovewere invited to the health clinics by public announcement.results: a total of 198972 participants were screened. themean age of participants was 47.8 years (48.5 men, 47.3 women),with a range of 1 to 95 years old and standard deviation of 12.3years (12.7 men, 12.1 women). overall, 22% of participants hadimpaired fasting glucose, 25% had hypercholesterolemia, 31% hadhypertriglyceridemia, and 20% had metabolic syndrome.conclusion: the high prevalence of dysglycemia and diabetes inour survey may serve as confirmatory evidence about the importanceof mass screening and early diagnosis of cncds’ risk factors.our model of establishing health clinics, as a comprehensivereferral system in the routine primary health care can be adoptedby middle eastern countries, where cncds notably diabetes arean emerging health problem.