As part of a series of articles on chronic disease, The Lancet has published a piece showing that by 2030, 7 out of 10 deaths internationally will be from chronic non-communicable diseases, and that low- and middle-income countries don’t have the infrastructure in place to deal with this future.
Of that 70% of deaths the paper cites, 80% of those will be in these less wealthy nations, which need to alter their health-systems to account for this coming rise. These diseases, like cancer, diabetes, and respiratory and heart disease, are usually associated with first world nations, and require complex health-systems to treat a patient that will be afflicted for a lifetime. The paper calls for nations to ramp-up their healthcare systems, and to put in place the networks necessary to get treatment to lifelong sufferers, as well as introduce public policy to minimize risk factors for the diseases.
