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The world is caught in a perfect storm of rising rates of chronic diseases, persistent infectious diseases and public health failures that have fueled the deaths in the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a major global study on human health.
The emergence and overlap of the coronavirus pandemic with a continued global increase in chronic conditions such as obesity and diabetes, with additional environmental risks such as air pollution, have exacerbated the number of deaths from coronavirus, he said.
The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study is the most comprehensive of its kind. Published in The Lancet medical journal, it analyzed 286 causes of death, 369 illnesses and injuries, and 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories to offer insight into the underlying health of the world’s population and the impact of Covid-19.
“Covid-19 is an acute over chronic health emergency,” said Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet. He described the coronavirus pandemic combined with high global rates of obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as a “syndemic.”
The study found that the leading causes of poor health in people aged 50 and over worldwide were ischemic heart disease, strokes and diabetes. In the youngest people (10-49 years), road injuries, HIV / AIDS, low back pain and depressive disorders predominated.
It also found that the rise in chronic diseases, combined with the failure of public health to address preventable risk factors, had left populations vulnerable to health emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic.
“The ‘syndemic’ nature of the threat we face demands that we not only address each affliction, but also urgently address the underlying social inequalities that shape them,” Horton said.
He said that chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, high blood sugar, obesity and high cholesterol suffered by millions of people around the world have played a critical role in driving the more than 1 million deaths caused by Covid-19 to date.
Such conditions, driven by unhealthy diets and inadequate levels of exercise, “will continue to shape health in all countries after the pandemic subsides,” he said.
