NEW DELHI - Despite an impressive economic growth trajectory and a
trillion-dollar economy, India still has reasons to worry about the future
health of its economy.
According to a joint report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the
World Economic Forum (WEF) report released for last week's World Health
Assembly in Geneva, India will lose a staggering US$237 billion by 2015 due to
the impact of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, strokes and cancer and
because of its unhealthy workplaces.
The report "Preventing Communicable Diseases in the Workplace through Diet and
Physical Activity" states that the financial loss to the Indian exchequer due
to lifestyle ailments will surge from
$8.7 billion in 2005 to $54 billion in 2015. The report - based on data
collected from the WHO's 193 member nations - had set 73 health parameters in
countries around the world. It concluded that chronic diseases like heart
disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and respiratory infections - all ailments of
long duration and slow progression - will severely impact people's earnings in
the future.
Although it's little solace for India, China's consolidated loss from lifestyle
diseases will be an even more gargantuan $558 billion, with an income loss of
$131.8 billion, an eight-fold rise since 2005. India's neighbor Pakistan will
similarly face an accumulated loss of $30.7 billion, with income loss
projections spiraling upwards from $ 5.5 billion to $ 6.7 billion in 2015.
Russia and the UK will be poorer by $33 billion each, while the other losers
will be Brazil ($9.3 billion), Nigeria ($1.5 billion) and Canada ($1.5
billion).
"It's a path-breaking report because it confirms our worst fears - that
breathless globalization, unhealthy lifestyles and stress-inducing work culture
will continue to take a heavy toll on our people's health," said Dr Sakshi
Chawla, chief dietician at Fortis Hospital in New Delhi. According to Chawla,
the changing dynamics of the Indian economy and its tilt from purely agrarian
to one that factors in information technology has played a catalytic role in
negatively impacting people's health and work culture.
"With increasing urbanization, more and more Indians are migrating to urban
areas to work in offices. This introduces them to fast food, ill-ventilated
offices, desk-bound sloth and city stress that hugely affects their
well-being," said Chawla. In any case, according to WHO's Department of Health
Statistics and Informatics, there's a perceptible trend towards more people
dying in the world these days due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as
heart disease and stroke as compared to infectious diseases.
In view of the humongous projected losses to national governments due to
lifestyle ailments, the WHO-WEF report advocates the concept of a healthy
workplace by targeting physical inactivity and unhealthy dietary habits.
It emphasizes that 60% - or 35 million - of deaths worldwide in 2005 resulted
from NCDs, accounting for 44% of premature deaths. What's worse, around 80% of
these deaths occurred in low and middle-income countries like India, already
crippled by the spiraling burden of infectious diseases, poor maternal and
nutritional deficiencies.
The report warns that almost half of chronic disease victims will be in their
productive years. It also cautions that though countries like Brazil, China,
Russia and India currently lose more than 20 million productive life-years
annually to chronic diseases, the number will swell by 65% by 2030.
Amid the dire predictions, however, the report also offers succor by stating
that governments can influence the health behavior of their population by
modifying workplace environments. "Workplaces should make possible healthy food
choices and support physical activity. Unhealthy diets and excessive energy
intake, physical inactivity and tobacco use are major risk factors for
non-communicable diseases," the report said.
This becomes more important in view of the fact that as compared to 3.1 billion
people who were economically active in 2007, the number will surge to 3.6
billion by 2020.
Disquieting as it is, the WHO-WEF study isn't the first to underscore a direct
link between India's rapid economic growth and its people's health. In 2006,
the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations had
forewarned that India's exponentially growing economy will trigger stress
amongst its workers and contribute to lifestyle diseases which may adversely
impact their earning capacity. Long working hours, night shifts and a sedentary
lifestyle were making employees vulnerable to heart disease, diabetes and
depression, the report said.
Even according to New Delhi's Indraprastha Hospital, heart disease is projected
to account for 35% of deaths among India's working-age population between 2000
and 2030. Also, in India, in the past five decades, rates of coronary disease
among urban populations have surged from 4% to 11%. A report by the Earth
Institute at Columbia University warned that without sustained effort on
individual and national levels, the imminent heart-disease epidemic will be
devastating for the region's physical and economic health.
The WHO estimates that 60% of the world's cardiac patients will be Indian by
2010. According to the International Obesity Task Force, a medical NGO that
coordinates with the WHO on obesity issues, south Asians have by far the worst
problems when it comes to heart disease. Nearly 50% of CVD-related deaths in
India occur below the age of 70, compared with just 22% in the West. In 2000,
for example, India lost more than five times as many years of economically
productive life to cardiovascular disease than did the US, where most of those
killed by heart disease are above retirement age.
The WHO-WEF report stresses that over 10% of Indian adults already suffer from
hypertension while a whopping 30 million are diabetics and three out of every
1,000 Indians suffer a stroke in their lifetime. In fact the number of heart
attack-related deaths is projected to up from 1.2 million to 2 million in 2010.
A government study also estimates the number of diabetics to rise to 57 million
in 2025. By 2020, the number of deaths each year due to chronic diseases in the
country of 1.1 billion people may stand at 7.63 million.
But despite recurrent forewarnings, the Indian government has still not been
able to get its act together on health. India's GDP spending on health
continues to be an abysmal 0.9%. In addition, it also suffers from skewed
priorities, say experts. For instance, there's an overemphasis on AIDS
prevention and millions are being spent in devising plans to combat a bird flu
pandemic which may or may not transpire. On the contrary, precious little has
been done to tackle the big four - cancer, diabetes, respiratory ailments and
heart diseases - which currently afflict huge chunks of its populace.
In fact, lifestyle diseases have already become the number one killer in India,
according to Dr Sneh Prabha, a professor of cardiology at a New Delhi medical
college. "The most important factors for lifestyle diseases are increasing
consumption of tobacco, dietary consumption of fats, particularly saturated
fat, lack of physical activity and inadequacy of stress-coping mechanisms," she
says.
In other words, while it's all very well for India to savor its spectacular
economic progress, it would do well to pause awhile to sensitize its business
sector and its workforce about the perils of lifestyle diseases arising from
unhealthy lifestyles and work culture. Only with a strong and vibrant workforce
can India hope to sustain its growth momentum and vie for a prominent place in
the world.
New Delhi-based independent journalist Neeta Lal has had her work
published in over 70 publications across 20 countries.
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