Cardiovascular and COPD in India: Challenges and opportunities

India’s expanding middle class, rapid development and urbanization over recent years have been outstanding.

Regrettably, as is the case in many other countries, changing lifestyles have adversely affected public health, with decreasing physical activity, greater levels of stress, and growing uptake of unhealthy habits. As a result, India is fast becoming a hub of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), with major implications for a country that aims to provide universal healthcare. On this occasion, we focus on the impacts of Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and Chronic obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in India, following on our previous sector views and reports which have discussed the NCD landscape, cancer, and diabetes.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) in India

India suffers disproportionately from cardiovascular disease. Currently there are about 45 million heart patients in India. Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the predominant CVD accounting for 90-95% of all cases and deaths. CHD includes conditions such as cardiomyopathies, acute myocardial infarction (MI), angina pectoris, congestive heart failure and inflammatory heart disease.

The key factors contributing to India’s growing CVD include unhealthy diets, reduced physical activity and stress. But in addition, CVD is further complicated by other ailments that are prevalent (and growing) in the country, such as diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension and obesity.

Chronic obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

100 million Indians suffer from some sort of respiratory disease. Cases of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) are rising, with currently close to 24 million (1 in 50 people) sufferers of COPD, and expected to increase by 34% to 32 million by 2020.

Factors contributing to the rise in COPD are: Air Pollution, smoking, urbanization/construction/industrialization, and indoor pollution (biomass fuels used for cooking).

India’s action plan

The central government is supplementing their efforts by providing technical and financial support through the National Program for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, CVD and Stroke (NPCDCS) program. The focus areas to tackle this growing problem are:

• Prevention: by creating general awareness about Non Communicable Diseases (NCD) and promotion of healthy lifestyle habits
• Early Diagnosis: Screening by means of simple clinical examinations
• Treatment: Plans to establish NCD clinics across the country
• Capacity building of human resource: Training institutes and centres

Opportunities

India’s high incidence of NCDs and current lack of infrastructure to tackle the problem generates a number of attractive opportunities for partnerships. The need for support in skills upgradation, primary healthcare development and collaborative research is clear, but also, we see potential in telemedicine, as well as for partnerships in health insurance, an area that is growing at a rate of more than 20%.

References:

http://www.dnaindia.com/health/report-heart-disease-no1-killer-of-indians-1866673http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-set-to-be–heart-disease-capital-of-world–say-doctors/1009607/http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-07/india/41853680_1_ncds-non-communicable-diseases-lifestyle-diseaseshttp://health.india.com/news/1-out-of-50-indians-will-have-copd-by-2012/http://ibnlive.in.com/news/lung-diseases-second-biggest-killer-by-2020/133192-3.htmlhttp://health.bih.nic.in/Docs/Guidelines/Guidelines-NPCDCS.pdf