Chronic illnesses like strokes, heart problems and lung cancer became the top causes of premature death in China over the past three decades, according to a new study showing health trends that increasingly resemble the US and other advanced nations.
The study, published this week in the Lancet, showed those conditions replacing lung infections and neonatal disorders as the lead killers in China.
The study offers a bird’s eye view of the new pressures facing Asia’s largest economy. As China grapples with long-running more complex diseases that are expensive to treat, the shift is increasingly likely to drive up its healthcare costs.
About 90 percent of the US’ US$3.3 trillion in annual healthcare expenditure is for people with chronic and mental health conditions, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed.
“Like many countries, China has reached a tipping point over the past three decades,” said Zhou Maigeng (周脈耕), an official at an offshoot of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who helped lead the study. “Going forward, the burden of chronic health problems, especially among the elderly, will far exceed infectious diseases.”
China’s health spending was 5 percent of GDP in 2016, compared with 17.1 percent in the US, 11.5 percent in France and 9.8 percent in the UK, WHO data showed.
High blood pressure, smoking, high sodium intake and outdoor pollution were now big contributing factors to deaths in China, the study said.
The research showed substantial differences in health problems at the provincial level.
People in urban, coastal and wealthier provinces in eastern China are healthier than those in rural and poorer areas in the west, the research showed.
Meanwhile, the national diabetes rate increased more than 50 percent from 2000 to 2017 due to changing lifestyles, including increased consumption of red meat and decreased levels of physical activity, the study found.
China is pushing to reduce pressure on its public health system by attempting to reduce drug prices and encourage more investment in hospitals.
The nation has benefited from the declines in maternal and child mortality rates over nearly three decades that have accompanied economic growth, as well as its efforts to implement national programs to tackle infectious diseases, the study said.
The study, part of a project called the Global Burden of Disease conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, studied data from 1990 to 2017.
In the US, heart diseases were the leading cause of death in 2016, followed by cancer, accidents, chronic lower respiratory diseases and stroke, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and liver cancer were also the leading causes of death in China, the study said.
Compared with countries with similar levels of economic development, such as Russia, China has unusually high levels of strokes, COPD, lung cancer, liver cancer, neck pain and stomach cancer, it said.
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