From stroke to cancer, from dementia to diabetes,
noncommunicable diseases represent 7 of the 10 leading causes of death in the world
, as
they
fall
out of the sad AIDS and tuberculosis ranking.
In particular,
cardiovascular diseases remain the number 1 killer
and represent 16% of total deaths from all causes.
To say this are the 2019 Global Health Estimates of the World Health Organization, which confirm
the growing trend of longevity
: in 2019 people lived 6 years longer than in 2000, with
a global average of 73 years in 2019 compared to almost 67 in 2000. But disability increases.
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death globally over the past 20 years,
but the number of annual deaths has increased by more than 2 million since 2000, to nearly 9 million in 2019, and Asian countries are on the rise. while Europe has seen a decline in deaths of 15%.
Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia rank among the top 10 causes of death and rank third in both America and Europe in 2019. Diabetes deaths increased by 70% globally between 2000 and 2019, especially among males.
Instead, there is a global decrease in deaths from communicable diseases, although they remain very high in low- and middle-income countries.
In 2019, pneumonia was ranked as the fourth leading cause of death but the global number of deaths decreased by nearly half a million compared to 2000. The same is true for AIDS, which dropped from the eighth cause of death in 2000 to 19 / but in 2019, and for tuberculosis, it went from 7th place in 2000 to 13th place in 2019, with a 30% reduction in global deaths.
"These new estimates remind us that we need to rapidly step up the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of noncommunicable diseases" and "dramatically improve primary health care on a fair level," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.