Wealth and health do not always go hand in hand. A report in British medical journal The Lancet’s special India edition says as Indians grow richer, they are adopting unhealthy lifestyles, increasing morbidity and threatening economic growth.
According to the report — an analysis of a large number of surveys and studies conducted in India — socio-economic development tends to be associated with healthy behaviour. The new rich are becoming unhealthy due to reduction in physical activity and increased consumption of energy-dense foods, leading to diabetes and obesity.
In the early stages of socio-economic development, people also indulge in risky behaviour such as driving high speed after consuming alcohol without wearing helmets and seatbelts, which makes them vulnerable to road accident injuries.
There is a positive side, though. As per the report, after the initial phases of socio-economic development, increased health literacy and public awareness of chronic disease leads to the rich adopting better lifestyles quicker than the less educated and poor.
As of now, however, physical inactivity and obesity are common among individuals in the upper-income quintiles, urban residents and elderly people. About 56% of urban population and 35% of rural population in India does not engage in physical activity.
In fact, the article predicts that in India, the number of deaths due to communicable diseases and maternal, perinatal, nutritional causes is likely to decrease between 2004 and 2030.
As the nation’s population ages in the next 25 years, the number of deaths due to chronic, mainly lifestyle, diseases which trouble mostly the affluent, will increase substantially.
Deaths caused by cancer are projected to increase from 7.3 lakh in 2004 to 1.5 million in 2030 and those attributable to cardiovascular causes from 2.7 million to 4 million.
“Overall, our projections are that chronic diseases will account for slightly less than three-quarters of all deaths in India by 2030, injury-related deaths are expected to go up by 30% mainly due to traffic and road accidents. The number of years of life lost because of coronary disease deaths before the age of 60 will increase from 7.1 million in 2004 to 17.9 million in 2030, which means by 2030 more life years will be lost as a result of this disease in India than what is projected for China, Russia and the US combined,” the authors wrote.
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