Lifestyle diseases

Lifestyle diseases claim more lives than infections in India

Experts demand more policies to promote healthy living

This is from the Front Page headlines of Hindustan Times Newspaper today the 5^th of March 2013

NEW DELHI: We have a killer lifestyle. Today, more Indians are dying of lifestyle diseases than of infections — a reverse of the situation in 1990. Heart ailments are the biggest killers, followed by lung disease and stroke, shows data from Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors 2010 (GBD 2010) being released on Tuesday morning.

Killer smoke from illegal hutments are responsible for the majority of deaths in Urban India, according to this report

Unhealthy diet and air pollution, mostly from cooking with wood fire and charcoal in poorly ventilated homes, are the two biggest disease and death risks.

And if bad diet and pollution don’t get you, roads will. Indian roads are the most dangerous in the world, with road injuries among the leading causes of death, shows the data from 187 countries.

“The menace of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, lung disease, depression and road traffic injuries is mounting in the form of premature deaths and disability,” said Dr Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. “Much of this is avoidable through policies that promote healthy living.”

Gender violence has battered women’s health. Suicides among young Indian women have doubled in the last 20 years, with deaths attributed to “self harm” among 15-49 year olds rising from under 5% in 1990 to 10% in 2010.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the GBD 2010 is a collaborative project led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

India’s big success has been reducing children’s deaths from infectious diseases by more than half. Deaths from diarrhoea, lung infections, measles, malnutrition and meningitis among 1-4 year olds fell from 8 lakh in 1990 to 3 lakh in 2010.