A report released by World Health Organisation highlighted the burden of lifestyle disease, which is shifting from infectious disease to noncommunicable diseases.
The report placed heart disease and stroke as main causes of death globally while infectious diseases like diarrhoea, HIV, tuberculosis, neonatal infections and malaria will take a backseat and are least likely to be the main cause of death in next 20 years.
The report is based on data collected from WHO's 193 member nation for a set of 73 health indicators in countries around the world.
“We are definitely seeing a trend towards fewer people dying of infectious diseases across the world,” said Dr Ties Boerma, Director of the WHO Department of Health Statistics and Informatics.
“We tend to associate developing countries with infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. But in more and more countries the chief causes of death are noncommunicable diseases, such as heart disease and stroke,” Boerma added.
The report has taken all aspect in detail including levels of mortality in children and adults, patterns of morbidity and burden of disease, prevalence of risk factors such as smoking and alcohol consumption, use of health care, availability of health care workers, and health care financing.
Besides, the report also draws attention to important issues in global health such as Maternal mortality, Life expectancy, Health care cost, Coverage of key maternal, neonatal and child health interventions.
India's report card
Another report “Preventing Communicable Diseases in the Workplace through Diet and Physical Activity” prepared by WHO and World Economic Forum at World Health Assembly said that India will lose $237 billion by 2015 due to rise in disease like diabetes, stroke and cancer because of unhealthy workplaces.
The report highlights that targeting physical inactivity and unhealthy dietary habits are useful to improve on health-related outcomes such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk factors.
The study stressed on health education to prevent cardiovascular diseases and impact of health education on controlling these diseases.
The survey is based on 35,000 employees and their family members in 10 different industries in India in the age group of 10-69 years and a detailed risk factor survey of 20,000 randomly selected individuals.
Along with India, China, Russia and Britain, among others, too remain vulnerable in this regard. India is placed second only to China in income loss.
The report suggested that India will account for over 10 per cent of the deaths the world and the major concern is death due to chronic disease at workplace, which is a curse of lifestyle change.
The change in economic profile has brought change in lifestyle too and with the advent of fast food, lack of physical activities and stress, disease due to lifestyle change too is growing at the fast rate.
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