Heart, lung diseases now leading killers in India
NAGPUR: Though life expectancy has gone up in last 23 years in India, the country needs to work towards minimizing the various causes of deaths that are showing a disturbing trend. Surprisingly, non-communicable diseases are emerging as bigger killers. Every fifth death in the world is from India. India has 17.5% of world population but accounts for 19% of total deaths.
Infectious diseases like tuberculosis, pneumonia, malaria were
the leading killers in India in 1990. They have now been
overtaken by Ischaemic Heart Disease (IHD) which is also the top
killer in the world. Diabetes, which did not figure in the top
ten killers list in India in 1990, has now entered the list
though at the tenth position. Globally diabetes figured ninth in
1990 but has since dropped out from the list.
Data
from Lancet publication dated December 14, 2014, based on the
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University
of Washington, study led by Prof Christopher Murray titled the
'Global Burden of Disease 2013' clearly indicate that globally
IHD, stroke, diarrhoeal diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease (COPD), tuberculosis, neonatal pre-term birth
complications, road injuries, lung cancer and malaria were the
top 10 killers. IHD and COPD together accounted for 32% of all
deaths in the world.
In India, in 2013, the top ten
killers included IHD, COPD, stroke, tuberculosis, pneumonia,
suicide, road injuries, hypertensive heart and diabetes. What is
more shocking is that tuberculosis and IHD are two big causes of
death in the age group of 15-49 years. IHD killed mostly people
above the age of 70. Clearly, India needs to stress control of
chronic non-infectious diseases as much as infectious ones.
Suicides and road injuries didn't figure in the top ten killers
in the country in 1990 but in 2013 they figure at seventh and
eighth position respectively.
The IHME study that
involved about 1000 international experts, authors and
collaborators from 188 countries also had Dr Vinay Nangia,
glaucoma expert and director of Suraj Eye Institute from the
city, as country expert. Dr Nangia said the study showed that in
India hypertensive heart diseases and suicides took more lives
in 2013 than in 1990 with deaths on their account increasing
138% and 129%, respectively. Road injuries have caused 88% more
deaths in 2013 than in 1990. Another disturbing trend is that in
children under five years of age diarrhoeal diseases, pneumonia,
neonatal disorders and malaria are still the leading causes of
death.
There are some good signs too. Since 1990,
India has seen a fall in deaths due to infectious diseases like
pneumonia by as much as 50% and that due to diarrhoeal diseases
by 42%. In 1990, these diseases killed 1,532,459 people.
Twenty-three years later the number dropped to 715,303. The
study also shows a change in the mortality or death pattern of
some diseases and injuries in men and women. While IHD killed
962,686 males and 623,823 females in 2013, diarrheal diseases
killed 232,825 women and 180,401 men.
Globally,
HIV/AIDS and malaria, showed different mortality patterns
compared to others.
Source:
The Times of India
