Heart diseases, stroke, cancer kill 41m every year –WHO

…Says one over-70 die every two seconds in 194 countries

ABOUT 41 million people die from non-communicable diseases every year.

World Health Organisation (WHO) gave the figure while raising new alarm over recent resurgent increase in global deaths associated with non-infectious diseases.

   A report published on WHO’s verified website, today, said non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and stroke, cancer, diabetes and respiratory disease – now outnumber infectious diseases as the top killers globally.

   Others include diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases, along with mental health, that combine to cause nearly three-quarters of deaths in the world, every year.

   According to the post, apart from these deaths another problem posed by non-infectious diseases is mental challenge.

   Breaking the figure further down, the post said 194 countries are worse affected, with one person  under the age of 70 dying of a non-infectious disease every two seconds while 86 per cent of those deaths are taking place in low-and-middle-income countries. 

   This major shift in public health over the last decades has gone largely    unnoticed.

   Major risk factors that lead to NCDs are tobacco use, unhealthy diet, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity and air pollution. Eliminating these factors could prevent or delay significant ill health and many premature deaths from NCDs.

   It will be recalled that the report is coming at a critical juncture for public health in 2022, only a handful of countries were on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) target on reducing early deaths from NCDs by a third by 2030.