More than 2.7 million people in India die of heart diseases every year – 52 per cent of them below the age of 70
NEW DELHI: Body Burden: Lifestyle Diseases, the latest report on the state of India’s health, investigates and exposes the new and emerging environmental triggers of NCDs in India. The report, released here today by a panel of eminent medical doctors, establishes that unless environmental risk factors are acknowledged and dealt with, India will not be able to curb NCDs, responsible for more than 61 per cent of the deaths in the country.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are four major risk factors for NCDs — alcohol, tobacco, poor diet intake and lack of physical activity. The WHO says that by investing just US $1-3 per person per year, countries can dramatically reduce illness and death from NCDs.
However, according to Sunita Narain, director general, CSE, the investment for India will be much higher. “We believe the cost is going to be much higher considering that risk factors (in India) are many more than the four identified by the global body. These risk factors have multiple targets and can cause diseases which are not generally linked to them. For example, exposure to pesticides is known to cause cancer, but new data is emerging to link it to diabetes as well,” she says.
Similarly, air pollution is known to cause Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD), but there is little understanding on how this can adversely affect mental health. Body Burden highlights these linkages. Says Vibha Varshney, the lead writer of the report: “Targeting environmental risk factors is essential if we want to meet the Sustainable Development Goal 3.4, which mandates a one-third reduction in premature deaths due to lifestyle diseases by 2030.”
“Though the WHO has identified the major risk factors for NCDs, it is still coy in calling out the real enemy—foods that are high in salt, sugar, fat and low in nutrition. It wants to play it as safe as possible so that it does not have to confront the real players and demand a restraint on their products, not through voluntary action but through government policies that restrict and restrain and put a premium on nutrition, not consumption,” says Narain.
Identifies seven major lifestyle health problems in India:
-Over 61 per cent of all deaths in India attributed to lifestyle or non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – says Body Burden, the latest state of the nation’s health report released by CSE
-More than 1.73 million new cancer cases likely to be recorded each year by 2020; air pollution, tobacco, alcohol and diet change are primary triggers
-Every 12th Indian a diabetic — India ranks second in the list of countries with highest diabetes patients
-Every third child in Delhi has impaired lungs; India had 35 million chronic asthma patients in 2016
-Air pollution causes 30 per cent of all premature deaths in the country; linkages with mental diseases revealed
-More than 2.7 million people in India die of heart diseases every year – 52 per cent of them below the age of 70
