About NCDS in India

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which include heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and chronic lung diseases, are the leading cause of death worldwide. Arogya World India Trust has focused its work in India where the NCD burden is massive – 20% of the population has on NCD, 10% more than one, and 50% of Indians die from NCDs. 

The disease burden in India is alarming: 20% of the people have one chronic disease and 10% more than one. India has a massive diabetes burden and the average person develops diabetes ten years earlier than in the West. South Asians account for 60% of the world’s heart patients. More than 72 million live with diabetes and one million die from it each year. Indians get the disease an average of 10 years earlier than counterparts in the West, often in their 30s and 40s. The economic impact is devastating – 25% of a poor family’s income is spent on diabetes care for one person. If untreated, diabetes can lead to heart disease, blindness, amputations and kidney failure.

Furthermore, India is a young country with half of the population under the age of 25 and 2/3rds of the citizens under the age of 35, which means that the public health agenda in the country, already reeling from maternal and child mortality, malnutrition and infectious diseases, is going to be very much more complicated with NCDs in the near future.