Multivariate Time Series Analysis Of Hypertension And Heart Disease: A Case Study Of The Ho Municipal Hospital

ABSTRACT

Concerns about the dangers of Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD) have been a major problem all over the world. Hypertension, which is the commonest CVD is gradually usurping the minds of public health workers globally. The disease is the commonest cause of morbidity and mortality all over the world. It is also the commonest cause of heart disease. In this study, we employ the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) modeling approach to model and to forecast hypertension and heart disease cases in the Ho municipality. The data was obtained from the municipal hospital and it spanned from the 1st January 2010 to 31st December 2014. The results revealed that VAR (2) was the best to model and forecast these CVDs. Diagnostic checks revealed the model is free of serial correlations and conditional heteroscedasticity. It also passed the stability test. The model was proposed for predicting hypertension and heart disease cases in the Ho municipality for the year 2015. The study reveals that there will be slight increase in cases of both conditions of hypertension and heart disease. A lot of sensitization programs must be organized by health workers and stake holders in the catchment of Ho so as to create awareness. This can prompt people to go for early checkup so that should they be positive, they can start medications early before it results into complications such as heart disease and stroke.