New Delhi:
This is a serious matter of concern. More than 1,19,000 people died due to rheumatic heart disease in our country in the year 2015. As per a new study, India had the highest estimated number of deaths due to this ailment across the globe.
India was among those five countries which reported the largest cases of the disease in 2015. India along with Indonesia, China, the DR Congo and Pakistan accounted for 73 per cent of the global cases.
India reported 13.17 million cases of rheumatic heart disease and is followed by China with 7.07 million and Pakistan with 2.25 million cases. Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo reported 1.18 million and 8,05,000 cases respectively.
This has been revealed in the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study showed that the highest estimated number of deaths due to the ailment in 2015 were recorded in India (119,100 deaths), China (72,600), and Pakistan (18,900).
The highest estimated death rates were over 10 deaths per every 1,00,000 population. These deaths occurred in India, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Pakistan, Fiji, Vanuatu, Marshall Islands, Central African Republic, Lesotho and the Federated States of Micronesia.
As a matter of fact, the ailment is a sequela of acute rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever is generally referred as a disease of poverty and is associated with poor sanitation and overcrowding.
The study revealed that global age-standardised mortality because of the heart disease declined from 9.2 deaths per 100,000 population in the year 1990 to 4.8 deaths per 100,000 population in 2015. This marked a decline of 47.8 per cent.
It has been reported that an estimated 77 per cent and 82 per cent of the deaths that happened in 1990 and 2015, respectively, took place in places which had an endemic disease pattern.
