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Heart disease now major global threat - report
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-04-25 09:36
Cheap food, cigarettes and city life are causing millions of early deaths in
the developing world, according to a report to be released on Monday.
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.
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