Our Largest Export: Our Leading Causes of Death

One's health is a very individual & personal issue yet taken as a whole, health is also a public matter given the large amounts of money we spend annually.  Here in the States, we recognize heart disease, cancer, stroke & lung disease as our perennial leading killers.

We think of infectious diseases as the biggest issue in the rest of the non-industrialized world.  Yet as I pointed out almost 2 months ago, India will soon need more cardiologists than infectious disease specialists.  In fact, the United Nations gave a conference last week to preview an upcoming conference on noncommunicable diseases.

And in a summary report released last month, the UN noted that noncommunicable or chronic diseases accounted for almost two-thirds of world-wide deaths in 2008.  This number is only expected to increase and disproportionately so in developing countries amongst lower income populations.  Globally, cardiovascular disease (including heart disease & strokes), cancer, diabetes & lung disease account for the majority of this silent epidemic that has snuck up on us.

The causes?  Tobacco use, unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity, and harmful alcohol use are responsible for more than three-quarters of the deaths in these 4 categories.  Their commonality?  All are within our power to change in order to prevent disease.  We just have to have the stomach to make & enforce legislation in the name of public health.  Why?  Because as individuals, we don't have the personal willpower to make the right choices.  And society is then left to pay for our errant ways to the tune of $300B worldwide in 2010 for cancer and $400B wordwide for lung disease.  Either we change, Big Brother makes us change, or we all go broke.