WORLDCAUGHTIN‘SYNDEMIC’ OF DISEASES, CORONAVIRUS

L ONDON— The world is caught in a perfect storm of rising rates of chronic disease, persistent infectious diseases and public health failures that have fueled deaths in the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a major global study.

The emergence and overlap of the coronavirus pandemic with a continued global rise in chronic conditions such as obesity and diabetes—with added environmental risks such as air pollution—have exacerbated the coronavirus death toll, it said.

Most comprehensive

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study is the most comprehensive of its kind. Published in The Lancet medical journal, it analyzed 286 causes of death, 369 diseases and injuries and 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories to offer a view on the underlying health of the global population and the impact of COVID-19.

“COVID-19 is an acute-onchronic health emergency,” said Richard Horton, the Lancet’s editor in chief. He described the coronavirus pandemic combined with high global rates of obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as a “syndemic.”

Causes of death

The study found that leading causes of ill health in people aged 50 and older worldwide were ischemic heart disease, stroke and diabetes. In younger people—aged 10 to 49—road injuries, HIV/AIDS, lower back pain and depressive disorders were dominant.

It also found that the rise in chronic diseases, combined with a failure of public health to tackle preventable risk factors, had left populations vulnerable to health emergencies such as the coronavirus pandemic.

“The ‘syndemic’ nature of the threat we face demands that we not only treat each affliction, but also urgently address the underlying social inequalities that shape them,” Horton said.