Prevention of noncommunicable diseases in a local therapist's practice: Content, problems, solution ways, and prospects

High-risk and secondary prevention strategies for noncommunicable diseases in primary health care are mainly implemented by local therapists. The large-scale clinical examination of an adult population (a high-risk strategy), which has been launched in the country since 2013 to solve the problems of detecting people with noncommunicable diseases and their risk factors and making a prevention counseling, is simultaneously a mechanism for the formation of a full therapeutic area passport to identify follow-up groups (a secondary prevention strategy). Currently, there is an obviously insufficient follow-up of inadequate quality. The reasons for this situation are a lack of regular training of local doctors in follow-up in addition to staff shortages. Medical teachers and professional communities working on the basis of common guidelines must be attracted to solve this problem. The actual introduction of a local therapist's efficient performance measures, the setting up of special structures in charge of primary care prevention in the health authorities, and the active involvement of medical prevention and health centers (for people at high risk in the absence of proven non-communicable diseases) in this process will be able to enhance the efficiency of a follow-up. Information technologies, including a tele-follow-up, are an important reserve in implementing the high-risk and secondary prevention strategies.

noncommunicable disease prevention, local therapist, medical examination, follow-up