Chronic Disease in China | Chronic Disease China

Chronic Disease In China

Chronic, non-communicable diseases account for an estimated 80% of total deaths and 70% of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost in China. Cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory disease and cancer are the leading causes of both death and the burden of disease, and exposure to risk factors is high: more than 300 million men smoke cigarettes and 160 million adults are hypertensive, most of whom are not being treated. An obesity epidemic is imminent, with more than 20% of children aged 7–17 years in big cities now overweight or obese. Rates of death from chronic disease in middle-aged people are higher in China than in some high-income countries.

In China, as in many other parts of the world, the government has focused on communicable diseases—however, China now has a "double burden" of disease. The prevention of chronic diseases is now receiving a national response commensurate with the burden.

The national cancer prevention and control plan (2004–10) is being implemented, and a national chronic disease prevention and control plan has been completed (in late-2005). Progress has been made in some areas, with current smoking prevalence in men declining at about 1% per year for a decade, and even better results in large demonstration programs. Much remains to be done, and resources and sustainability are major issues. However, the surveillance and intervention mechanisms needed to ameliorate the increasing burden of chronic diseases are developing rapidly, taking account of the lessons learned over the past two decades.

Famous quotes containing the words chronic disease, chronic, disease and/or china:

“That’s the whole story of my life: frustration. It’s a chronic disease, and it’s incurable.”
—Robert E. Sherwood (1896–1955)

“Before now poetry has taken notice
Of wars, and what are wars but politics
Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)

“Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they don’t brag about it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not die—at least not in the act—and yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)

“It all ended with the circuslike whump of a monstrous box on the ear with which I knocked down the traitress who rolled up in a ball where she had collapsed, her eyes glistening at me through her spread fingers—all in all quite flattered, I think. Automatically, I searched for something to throw at her, saw the china sugar bowl I had given her for Easter, took the thing under my arm and went out, slamming the door.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)