Heart disease now major global threat - report
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-04-25 09:36

Cheap food, cigarettes and city life are causing millions of early deaths in the developing world, according to a report to be released on Monday.

Heart disease, once an illness of the rich, is killing more and more people in poor countries, according to the report.

"The risk of cardiovascular disease is growing as populations increase in cities," reads the report, issued by Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York.

"There, food is steadily becoming cheaper and exercise is scarce. The prevalence of obesity and of diabetes and of its precursor conditions, are rising faster in urban than in rural areas," the report adds.

"The tobacco scourge, now at epidemic levels in less-developed countries, exacts its toll in many ways, but cardiovascular deaths are its principal mode of mortality."

Unlike in the United States, few are working to help people quit smoking, to eat healthier diets and to get some exercise, the report says.

The result is that people are dying young -- in their most productive economic years. The loss of middle-aged workers will affect entire economies, the report cautions.

In the United States, where heart disease is far and away the No. 1 killer, there are 116 deaths per 100,000 men aged 35 to 59 from heart disease and stroke each year.

In Russia, there are 576 such deaths per 100,000 men the same age.

NO LONGER A DISEASE OF THE RICH

"Cardiovascular disease has always been seen as a disease of affluent and older people in developed nations, yet 80 percent of all CVD deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries," Philip Poole-Wilson, President of the Geneva-based nonprofit World Heart Federation said in a statement.

"A major finding of this report is that in developing countries the onset of CVD occurs among younger people, increasingly affecting those of working and productive age."

In South Africa for example, 41 per cent of all heart deaths were in people aged between 35 and 64.

In the United States, the Federation predicts, 73 percent of heart deaths will be in people over 75.

"Until now, governments, health authorities and the medical community have neglected CVD and the burden it imposes on developing economies," Janet Voute, chief executive officer of the World Heart Federation, said in a statement.

"Unless intervention programs are put into effect now we will witness a global health crisis in developing countries as skilled workers die or become disabled, women are widowed and older people require expensive medical support for disability related to CVD."

The Columbia University team studied Brazil, South Africa, China, Tatarstan and India, combining population estimates with current death rates and workforce data to calculate the potential effects of heart disease.

"In just the five countries surveyed, our conservative estimates are that at least 21 million years of future productive life are lost because of CVD each year," said Stephen Leeder, a professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney in Australia, who worked on the report.

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