There is an accelerated rise in the prevalence of chronic non-communicable (NCD) ailments such as diabetes and hypertension and they dominate communicable diseases in the total disease burden of the country, a government report stated.
In a recent report of India Council of Medical Research (ICMR) titled India: Health of the Nation's States: The India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative (2017), it is observed that the disease burden due to communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases, as measured using disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), dropped from 61 per cent to 33 per cent between 1990 and 2016.
In the same period, disease burden from non-communicable diseases increased from 30 per cent to 55 per cent.
According to the National Health Profile 2019, 6.51 crore patients were screened at NCD clinics as part of the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS) from January 1 to December 31, 2018.
Of these, 4.75 per cent of patients were diagnosed with diabetes, 6.19 per cent with hypertension, 0.3 per cent with cardiovascular diseases, 0.10 per cent with stroke and 0.26 per cent were diagnosed with common cancers.
Acute respiratory infections contributed 69.47 per cent to the morbidity burden in the country followed by acute diarrhoeal diseases at 21.83 per cent.
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Cases of cholera showed an increase from 508 in 2017 to 651 in 2018, with Uttar Pradesh recording the largest number of cases followed by Delhi and West Bengal. The cases of typhoid went up to 23,08,537 in 2018 from 22,64,453 in 2017.
Even vector-borne diseases or zoonotic disease showed a high morbidity and mortality rate in the country.
While morbidity rate is the frequency or proportion with which a disease appears in a population, mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in a particular population.
There has been a decrease in the number of cases of and deaths due to malaria in 2018 and the maximum number were reported in Chattisgarh.
The overall prevalence of the disease diminished in 2012 and 2013, however, there was a slight increase in 2014 and 2015, before it again started decreasing from 2016, the report stated.
Bihar accounts for most of the cases by Kala-azar. In 2018, out of the overall reported cases of 4,380 in India, 3,423 cases were reported from Bihar.
Dengue and chikungunya transmitted by aedes mosquitoes are a cause of great concern to public health. The report stated that every year, thousands are affected and the severity of the disease has increased in the last two decades.
The reported cases of chikungunya in the country have shown a slight decrease from 67,769 to 57,813 in 2018 as compared to 2017.
There has been considerable decrease in the number of swine flu cases and deaths in 2014 as compared with 2012 and 2013. However, the number has drastically increased in the year 2015.
The reported number of cases and deaths due to chicken pox in the country witnessed a decrease from 2017 to 2018. Kerala accounts for the maximum number of cases at 34,785 and West Bengal for the most deaths at 31 in 2018.
Total number of Cases and Deaths due to Encephalitis were 10045 and 530 respectively in India during 2018 with Assam reporting the maximum numbers of cases (5109) and maximum number of deaths (147).
Since the reported data is from government health facilities, it may have limitations in terms of its completeness as private medical and healthcare institution still need to strengthen their reporting to their respective Government Health units, the report stated.
" Though there have been substantial achievements in controlling communicable diseases, still they contribute significantly to disease burden of the country.
"Decline in morbidity and mortality from communicable diseases have been accompanied by a gradual shift to, and accelerated rise in the prevalence of, chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cancers, mental health disorders and injuries," the report highlighted.