Heart Disease Kills Everywhere
April 6, 2006 by Lei
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Cardiovascular disease is typically associated with the excessive lifestyle of developed countries – higher fat, salt, and sugar intake coupled with physical inactivity. But even in developing countries, heart disease is a serious problem; it kills 13 million people, more than three times the number dying from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
Considering that most of the world’s population live in a developing country, heart disease is a problem too big to ignore.
Dr. Runlin Gao, a cardiologist at Fu Wai Hospital:
The total disease burden of cardiovascular disease in China is higher than in the United States and most other Western countries. Cardiovascular disease has been the leading cause of deaths in China since the 1990s.
This suggestion by Dean Jamison, health economics professor at the University of California, San Francisco, was the most interesting and I’m sure many will find it too controlling:
You don’t have to change people’s hearts and minds, you change behavior through changing prices people face or changing specific aspects of their environment like putting in speed bumps or simply taking things off the shelves. They don’t have any choice.
But that’s exactly what will work. When I don’t have chips, cakes, or cookies in the house, I don’t eat it. If they’re there, I’ll eat it and more. It’s human nature.
Human nature will be the downfall of us all no matter where we are – developing country or not.
The Washington Post, April 5, 2006
