As per World Bank report titled "Global Burden of Disease", non-communicable diseases are causing more premature mortality and disability in India compared to communicable diseases. Examine the reasons for the same while suggesting some of the measures adopted in National Health Policy- 2017 to tackle the problem.

The recent World Bank report ‘Global Burden of Disease’ indicates that non-communicable diseases like diabetes, chronic respiratory afflictions and heart ailments have been on an increase resulting in premature mortality. Subsequent to this, several studies at the national level have indicated reasons for the same:

• Varying disease patterns-Studies have shown that there is a great variation in the patterns of disease across the country. So, it becomes difficult to adopt one health policy and uniform health scheme for the whole country. While some states are more affected by malnutrition while others by diabetes.
• Some of the common risk factors like unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, tobacco use and stress, change in lifestyle etc. are responsible for this shift to non-communicable diseases.

The National Health Policy 2017 wishes to achieve the principles of accountability, universality, affordability, equity, professionalism, integrity and ethics etc. Its goal is to attain the highest possible health and well being spread across all ages, by adopting a preventive as well as a promotive health care orientation in all development policies and universal access to good quality health care services. It wishes to reinforce the trust in public health care system, regularly track the measure of burden of disease etc.

Topics: GS-II: Social Sector Services Education Human Resources