As the Healthcare system starts waking back to ailments other than those inflicted by the respiratory viruses, a monster stares right in the face of people: The gigantic burden of non-communicable diseases. The giant also exposes our sheer ineptness in bridling its expanse with our defunct prevention programs.
As per a very scientific and elaborative report released in 2018 – the Health of Nation’s States, Ischemic Heart Disease is the leading cause of death and years of life lost in J&K. From 1990 to 2016, the disease has moved from number three spot to number one spot. One in every 10 deaths, a little more in fact, is caused by heart disease. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Stroke, Chronic Kidney Disease and Diabetes together constitute a web of ailments, trapping thousands and thousands people across the UT every year.
As a result, the quality of life and the years of life lived with disease and disability keeps on expanding and although life expectancy has increased, it has not resulted in a more healthy life for most people. A number of experts hold unhealthy lifestyles responsible for this onslaught but when it comes to the preventive part, there hardly is an initiative that could help people lead better and more healthy lives.
The report states that 36 percent of people over the age of 40 years, across gender, lose life to cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, high fasting plasma glucose, high BMI, high total cholesterol and impaired kidney function. These conditions feature among top 10 risk factors driving death and disability. Although these disorders existed earlier too, in the last one decade, the proportion of the population having these health conditions has increased steeply. In the 1990s, only 4.8 percent of the population suffered from high blood pressure, the report says, today the percentage stands doubled. People with high fasting glucose and high total cholesterol have more than doubled as well.
In 2010, the GoI launched the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular disease and Stroke (NPCDCS) to combat and control these diseases. The States and UTs are expected to send proposals suiting their local requirements for support under the program and boost their infrastructure, manpower and services in this sector. However, J&K seems to have dismally sidelined the provisions of this program, the pandemic worsening the possibilities as well.
Not a single Non-Communicable Diseases Clinic is operational today in the UT. The past two years have seen the Health Sector in Kashmir division, especially in the peripheries kneeling for no reason, much apart from the Pandemic as well. A work done summary of the Peripheral Health Sector – Directorate of Health Services Kashmir shows that the hospitals and health centers under it have been majorly unsupportive to mitigation of COVID19, yet, the day-to-day functioning was stopped and the programs like those for NCDs halted.
The need of the hour is to make awareness about healthy diet and lifestyle tickle to the lowest denominator, not just through alien sounding public service announcements but through educational and counseling sessions, in mohallas, offices, schools, colleges and roadsides. J&K needs a robust system to ensure early detection and early treatment of health conditions in this category. For that we need health clinics equipped with efficient laboratories and diagnostics and manpower to run these, in every district. These services and facilities need to be brought under the ambit of health insurance to reduce the burden on the pocket of people.
J&K needs to ramp up its vigil and action against non-communicable diseases. The Pandemic cannot be an excuse to unsee this monster in the room.