health

Updated: Sep 15, 2017 23:04 IST

Malnourishment and unhealthy eating habits are killing one-fifth of the world’s population, while in India deaths due to non-communicable diseases such as cancer, heart and kidney diseases are rising alarmingly, shows a new study by British medical journal The Lancet.

Road injuries and natural disasters are other common causes of deaths.

The Lancet published ‘Global, regional, and national under-5 mortality, adult mortality, age-specific mortality, and life expectancy, 1970–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016’, and also ‘Life, death and disability in 2016 study on Friday.

Death of children under five years of age remains a concern for India, as the largest number of under-5 deaths nationally in 2016 occurred in the country, with 0.9 million deaths. Nigeria comes a close second with 0.7 million deaths, followed the Democratic Republic of the Congo with 0.3 million deaths.

India’s under-5 mortality rate-- deaths per 1000 live births, remains 39.

Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) are turning into an epidemic, with the data showing more than 6 million deaths due to NCDs in the country in 2016.

The studies with inputs of 2,500 experts, also showed 1.1 billion people are living with some form of mental illness and disorders related to substance abuse. Depression ranked among the top 10 causes of ill health in 191 of the 195 countries and territories included in the study.

Commenting on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2016 data, Dr Vivekanand Jha, executive director, The George Institute for Global Health, said, “The contribution of non-communicable diseases to death and disability in India continues to grow at an alarming rate – a ticking time bomb that is increasingly affecting not just our health but our economy as well.”