By Ben Hirschler

LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) - Heart disease, usually seen as a quintessentially Western problem, is a growing threat in urban Africa, where healthcare systems are ill-equipped to spot danger signals, researchers said on Friday.

African women are at greater risk than men, according to a large study of heart patients at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa. In the developed world, by contrast, men dominate the statistics.

Historically, heart disease among Africans has been caused by infections and malnourishment, leading to relatively rare conditions such as valve disease, cardiomyopathies and tuberculosis-related problems.

But Simon Stewart, a visiting professor in Soweto from Australia's Baker Heart Research Institute, said this profile was changing fast, with rising rates of obesity and high blood pressure pointing to much more disease in the years ahead.

"In Soweto, like in other urban areas of Africa, we have gone from abject poverty to signs of affluence and that is driving more affluent disease," he said in a telephone interview.

"The traditional risk factors found in the developed world are appearing -- things like high blood pressure, obesity, sedentary behaviour and poor diet, with the emergence of fast food outlets."

Baragwanath -- the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere -- is a unique "barometer" for urban Africa and Stewart and colleagues hope their research will form a baseline to track the future development of heart disease.

The study evaluated data on 4,162 patients with confirmed cardiovascular disease (CVD) attending Baragwanath in 2006.

Of the 1,593 who were newly diagnosed, 59 percent exhibited multiple risk factors and the most common primary diagnosis was heart failure, a condition where the heart struggles to pump blood due to progressive weakening.

The results were published in the Lancet journal.

The study did not measure the rate of increase in heart disease but Stewart said the number of cases of coronary heart disease had leapt from only a couple a year in the 1970s to between 150 and 200 today.

"For a big coronary care unit in London or New York, that's still quite quiet, but for Africa it is enormous. In the past, they would have waited a whole six months for the first patient to come in," he said. (Editing by Andrew Roche)

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