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Heart Disease Now Major Global Threat
Cheap food, cigarettes and city life
are causing millions of early deaths in the developing world,
according to a report to be released.
Heart disease, once an illness
of the rich, is killing more and more people in poor countries,
according to the report.
"The risk of cardiovascular disease
is growing as populations increase in cities," reads the report,
issued by Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York.
"There, food is steadily becoming
cheaper and exercise is scarce. The prevalence of obesity and
of diabetes and of its precursor conditions, are rising faster
in urban than in rural areas," the report adds.
"The tobacco scourge, now at epidemic
levels in less-developed countries, exacts its toll in many ways,
but cardiovascular deaths are its principal mode of mortality."
Unlike in the United States, few
are working to help people quit smoking, to eat healthier diets
and to get some exercise, the report says.
The result is that people are dying
young -- in their most productive economic years. The loss of
middle-aged workers will affect entire economies, the report cautions.
In the United States, where heart
disease is far and away the No. 1 killer, there are 116 deaths
per 100,000 men aged 35 to 59 from heart disease and stroke each
year.
In Russia, there are 576 such deaths
per 100,000 men the same age.
NO LONGER A DISEASE OF THE RICH
"Cardiovascular disease has always
been seen as a disease of affluent and older people in developed
nations, yet 80 percent of all CVD deaths occur in low- and middle-income
countries," Philip Poole-Wilson, President of the Geneva-based
nonprofit World Heart Federation said in a statement.
"A major finding of this report
is that in developing countries the onset of CVD occurs among
younger people, increasingly affecting those of working and productive
age."
In South Africa for example, 41
per cent of all heart deaths were in people aged between 35 and
64.
In the United States, the Federation
predicts, 73 percent of heart deaths will be in people over 75.
"Until now, governments, health
authorities and the medical community have neglected CVD and the
burden it imposes on developing economies," Janet Voute, chief
executive officer of the World Heart Federation, said in a statement.
"Unless intervention programs are
put into effect now we will witness a global health crisis in
developing countries as skilled workers die or become disabled,
women are widowed and older people require expensive medical support
for disability related to CVD."
The Columbia University team studied
Brazil, South Africa, China, Tatarstan and India, combining population
estimates with current death rates and workforce data to calculate
the potential effects of heart disease.
"In just the five countries surveyed,
our conservative estimates are that at least 21 million years
of future productive life are lost because of CVD each year,"
said Stephen Leeder, a professor of Public Health at the University
of Sydney in Australia, who worked on the report.
Reference
Source 89
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