India among countries to take down ‘Global Health Improvement’ numbers: WHO

New Delhi: A recent data published by the World Health Organisation (WHO), gauging world’s progress to attain the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG); revealed over half of the world’s population don’t get required health services. Low to middle income countries (LMCs) like India are said to be responsible for most of the deaths due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and death of children below five years of age.

A report by CNN-News18 said that a majority of 13 million people who died before the age of 70 were from LMCs. The cause of their deaths was found to be cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes and cancer. India alone contributed 23.3 percent of deaths from NCDs between the age group of 30 to 70 in 2016, which is higher than the global average of 18 percent.

The number of reported tuberculosis cases in 2016 in India alone was 211 per 100000 population. Other than this, LMC countries like India, comprised of 99 percent of 3,03,000 women who died during childbirth in 2015.

Other parameters such as air pollution were also mentioned in the report that said India has the second highest annual mean levels of fine particulate matter in the South-East Asia region, behind Nepal.