New Delhi: With the country grappling with an increased incidence of suicides—almost four out of 10 women who commit suicide in the world are from India—the surge in the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as diabetes, cancer, stroke, cardiovascular and chronic respiratory ailments paints a grim picture of its promise to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030.
About 55 million people in India suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; cases of diabetes have increased by 150 percent; and despite several advances made in the healthcare sector, deaths due to cancer have doubled since 1990.
These were the findings of ‘India State-level Disease Burden Initiative’ report, which was prepared by a joint initiative of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), in collaboration with the ministry of health and family welfare.
The study, which was published as part of the Global Burden of Disease Study, analysed all identifiable epidemiological data from India between 1990 and 2016. It was published in a series of five research papers by ‘The Lancet’.
The report estimated a total of 23.8 million prevalent cases of ischaemic heart disease—reduced flow of blood and oxygen to the heart muscles that can ultimately lead to heart attack—and 6.5 million prevalent cases of stroke.
The number of chronic obstructive lung disease cases in India has increased from 28 million to 55 million from 1990 to 2016, and death rate among these cases is twice as high in the less developed states than in the more developed states, the study said.
Chronic respiratory diseases were responsible for 10·9 per cent of the total deaths and 6·4 per cent of the total DALYs in India in 2016 as compared with 9·6 per cent and 4·5 per cent respectively in 1990.
One out of every five adults (aged 20 years or older) in India are overweight, the study found. For every 100 overweight adults, 38 adults in India suffered from diabetes in 2016. That is twice the global average.
The estimated number of cancer cases in India increased from 5.48 lakh in 1990 to 10.6 lakh in 2016 that contributed 5 per cent of the total Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALYs)—the metric quantifying the burden of disease from mortality and morbidity—and 8·3 per cent of the total deaths in India in 2016.
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