India in particular and South Asian countries in general, are facing a ‘health crisis’ with rising rates of heart disease, diabetes, obesity (fedme/overvægt) and other Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs = sygdomme, der ikke smitter), the World Bank said Wednesday.
In its report “Capitalizing on the Demographic Transition: Tackling Non communicable Diseases in South Asia”, the World Bank rates heart diseases as the leading cause of death in adults aged 15-69, and South Asians suffer their first heart attack six years earlier than other groups worldwide.
Economic growth has helped increase average life expectancy to 64 years in South Asia, which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the report showed.
Still, people in the region are aging without the better living conditions, improved nutrition, rising incomes and access to health care that benefit older people in developed nations, it said.
“This unfair burden is especially harsh on poor people, who, after heart attacks, face life-long major illnesses, have to pay for most of their care out of their savings or by selling their possessions, and then find themselves caught in a poverty trap where they can not get better and they can not work, Michael Engelgau, a senior public health specialist, said in a statement accompanying the report that he co-wrote.
The report encourages (opfordrer) the eight countries of South Asia to adopt and carry out a number of country and regional approaches to reduce both unhealthy risk factors in their general populations and control heart disease, diabetes, cancers, and other NCDs.
In terms of population-based interventions, the effects of key anti-tobacco measures and a reduction in salt intake of 15 percent modeled in 23 low- and middle-income countries found that over 10 years, 13,8 million deaths could be averted, at a cost of less than 40 US cents (2,50 DKR) per person a year.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
