Chronic disease deaths India: A Lancet analysis of 185 countries shows most nations cut deaths from long-term illnesses like heart disease, stroke and cancer before COVID-19. India was an exception: the risk of dying from these diseases rose for both men and women between 2010 and 2019, with a sharper increase in women, driven largely by heart disease and diabetes.
Led by Imperial College London with support from the UK Medical Research Council, NIHR and the NCD Alliance, the report compares each country’s performance against its own past decade and regional peers. Globally, progress slowed in about 60% of countries versus 2000–2009, even though most still recorded absolute declines in NCD mortality.
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The biggest global gains came from cardiovascular deaths falling and improvements in several cancers (stomach, colorectal, cervical, breast, lung and prostate). Those wins were partly offset by rising mortality from dementia and other neuropsychiatric conditions (including alcohol use disorder) and some cancers, such as pancreatic and liver.
Regionally, China posted declines comparable to Japan and South Korea across most ages and causes, including the largest reduction in COPD deaths among countries with high-quality data, underscoring India’s divergent trajectory over the same period.
The authors say the slowdown underscores the need to reinvest in proven measures that drove rapid gains early in the 2000s: tobacco and alcohol control; population screening and early detection (BP, diabetes, and cancers); affordable preventive medicines (for hypertension, cholesterol, and diabetes); and timely treatment for acute events like heart attacks and strokes. Coverage of BP/diabetes control and some cancer screening programmes has plateaued in many settings.
Calling the picture “progress, but not enough,” the team and WHO collaborators urge countries, India included, to target both working-age and older adults, where backsliding has dragged down overall performance. The findings will be discussed later this month on the sidelines of UNGA 80, ahead of the UN’s Fourth High-Level Meeting on NCDs.
(Source: Lancet)
