New Delhi, July 20: 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 inc.