ABSTRACT
Notwithstanding these major rises in risk factors, mortality rates from CHD in black town dwellers remain very low
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about a tenth of the rates in the white population. Undoubtedly, CHD incidence will increase over time due to ongoing increases in risk factors. Currently, however, the low mortality rate from the disease among urban Africans stands in gross contrast to the rates of African Americans, whose current proneness to the disease now equals that of white Americans. While the lower than expected prevalence of CHD in urban sub-Saharan Africans remains unexplained, it must be appreciated, in fairness, that incident rates of CHD are widely divergent even in developed populations and are far from being explicable from known risk factors.
