Experts stress need for boosting preventive health as lifespan is set to increase

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There's an urgent need to boost preventive health to prevent a large burden of diseases, even as a recent study showed an increase in lifespan by 2050, said experts on Saturday.

According to the latest findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2021, published recently in The Lancet journal, global life expectancy is expected to increase by 4.9 years in men and 4.2 years in women by 2050. This is despite the geopolitical, metabolic, and environmental threats.

However, people are expected to spend more years in poor health with cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and diabetes.

"Unless we take preventive health more seriously, our health systems will not be able to cope with the huge burden of the disease," said Lancelot Pinto, consultant pulmonologist and epidemiologist, P. D. Hinduja Hospital and MRC, Mahim.

"Historically, as countries prosper, nutrition gets better and vaccination programmes get robust, infectious diseases tend to decline. However, with prosperity comes the dietary and lifestyle changes that can harm," Pinto said.

The study predicted that like today, ischemic heart disease will continue to be the number one cause of mortality globally. Strokes will continue to be the number two cause of mortality, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease will be the third most common cause of mortality worldwide even in 2050.

As far as the Indian population is concerned, the study predicted an increased burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) -- a common lung disease.

"India is one of the leading producers and consumers of tobacco in the world, and COPD, often associated with smoking, is likely to manifest strongly as the population gets older," Pinto said, while adding air pollution, use of indoor biomass fuels and poor lung development in childhood as added risk factors.

"Overall chest disease burden in India will be much higher than what the West because we continue to struggle with the earlier problems of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, and we have started seeing a massive increase in the new age diseases like lung cancer," said Arvind Kumar, Chairman, Institute of Chest Surgery, Chest Onco Surgery and Lung Transplantation, Medanta Hospital, Gurugram.

He said, "COPD burden overall may be much higher than what this report has predicted".

The report also predicted the increased risk of ischemic heart disease, also known as coronary artery disease.

This leads to "obstructive blockages in the artery due to deposition of atherosclerotic plaques. The reduced blood supply to the heart muscle results in angina as a warning signal. A sudden blood clot formation on top of these blockages can result in a heart attack", said Atul Mathur, Executive Director, Interventional Cardiology & Chief of Cath Lab, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, Okhla Road, New Delhi.

He said that a sudden blood clot formation on top of these blockages can result in a heart attack.

The experts thus stressed the need for increasing preventive measures including healthy eating, regular exercise, and good control of hypertension, diabetes, and cholesterol.

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