Covid poses risk to healthy Indian lives: WHO report
Indians lose a decade of healthy life to non-communicable diseases like diabetes, cancers, and heart and lung diseases, and the threat to a healthy life will be compounded by of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, said the World Health Organization (WHO)’S annual report card of the global health status released on Wednesday.
The average life expectancy in India is 68.8 years, with women living close to three years longer than men. Life expectancy is 70.3 years for women in India, and 67.4 years for men, said the 2020 World Health Statistics report.
The healthy life expectancy in India is 59.3 years, and lags far behind developed nations. It’s similar for women and men, with women living 59.9 years compared to 58.7 years for men. The healthy life expectancy is the highest in Japan, with people living 74.2 years of disease free life. It’s also high in France, Italy, Norway, South Korea and Australia, where people live a healthy between 73 years and 73.5 years.
The biggest gains in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy were among low-income countries, where life expectancy rose by 11 years between 2000 and 2016 because of improved access to services to prevent and treat infections such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, said the report.
The deaths and economic disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic are threatening to derail the health gains and the progress made towards achieving global development goals, the report said. “The good news is that people around the world are living longer and healthier lives. The bad news is the rate of progress is too slow to meet the Sustainable Development Goals and will be further thrown off track by Covid-19,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general, WHO.
The adolescent birth rate (births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 years) in India was still high at 10.7, with around 72% women in the reproductive age having access to modern methods of contraception. “It is disappointing to see India among the bottom of all countries in context of healthy life expectancy, which is now primarily driven by non-communciable diseases (NCDS), such as diabetes, cancers, heart and lung disease, and stroke. The Covid-19 pandemic will bring this down further as our recent research shows that poor control of diabetes and its many complications will rise in the future,” said Dr Anoop Mishra, chairman of Fortis Centre for Diabetes, Obesity and Cholesterol, New Delhi.
The report said there is an overall shortage of services within and outside the health system to prevent and treat NCDS. In 2016, 70% all deaths worldwide were attributable to NCDS, with 85% of them occurring in low and middle-income countries. Two in three deaths in India are from NCDS. “One of the key lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic is that we must invest in data and health information systems, as part of our overall public health capacity, before a crisis strikes. To emerge from this crisis stronger, we must be able to monitor progress with real-time, reliable and actionable data,” said Dr Ghebreyesus.
Strengthening capacity for data and information requires collaboration across governmental and non-governmental institutions, including ministries of health and finance, national statistics offices, offices of the registrar general, local and regional government, and academia.
Twitter on Tuesday became the first major tech company to allow employees who can work remotely to do so indefinitely, as the Covid-19 outbreak forces unprecedented changes in work culture across the world.
The pandemic has led to strict lockdowns in most countries and changed the way businesses function, with work-from-home emerging as the new norm.
The social media company said it will not reopen most offices before September and employees can choose whether or not to come to the facilities. Buzzfeed first reported Twitter’s move.
Chief executive officer Jack Dorsey had earlier planned to move to Africa for three to six months in mid-2020, while leading San Francisco-based Twitter remotely. Dorsey later said he was reconsidering the idea due to the health crisis. Twitter said on Tuesday it will not have business travels before September, with very few exceptions, and no in-person company events for the rest of the year. Tech giants like Facebook and Google have allowed most of their employees to work remotely until the end of this year.
INDIANS LOSE A DECADE OF HEALTHY LIFE TO NON-COMMUNICABLE AILMENTS SUCH AS DIABETES, CANCER, AND HEART DISEASE
LOCKDOWN EFFECT