Cardiovascular risks high among less educated and less wealthy, study says

An international team comprising medical researchers from Germany, USA and India have found that major risk factors for cardiovascular diseases like unhealthy weight gain, diabetes and blood pressure are at a peak level among the less educated and less wealthy masses in India.

During the study, public health researchers used the last two editions of the National Family Health Survey to map how the prevalence patterns of such risk factors have changed between 2015-16 and 2019-21. It is said that there has been a massive sweep in the population and hit the rural areas as much as the urban landscape.

The report revealed that cardiovascular diseases can no longer be characterized as a wealthy urban phenomenon.

One of the team members and a professor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Nikhil Tandon in Delhi told Deccan Herald: "We can't have the luxury of assuming that these are the problems of mainly the urban affluent class as the risk factors are growing fast in rural areas and among less affluent people. It's time for the government to think about a nationwide plan to allocate more resources to tackle the surge of non-communicable diseases".

It has been founded by the researchers that between 2015- 16 and 2019-21, there has been a rise in unhealthy weight gain across all socioeconomic groups and the gains were higher in less educated and less wealthy people.

Among the vulnerable populations, the prevalence of diabetes and high blood pressure is at a peak, but still, it is the same or even declined among educated and wealthy people.

The report said that the extent of both overweight and obesity was higher among wealthier and educated people in 2015-2016, but there developed a drastic change in overweight among people with low socio-economic status.

This corresponds to a 29.5 percent increase among the uneducated compared to a just 7.6 per cent increase among those with the highest level of education. Similarly, the poorest witnessed more than a 78 percent rise in overweight while the richest experienced a more modest change of 8.33 percent increase.

According to reports published by the researchers in Lancet Regional Health South East Asia, hypertension increased by 7.41 percent among those with no education and by 12.66 percent among the poorest section of the people, but dropped by 18 per cent in people with higher education and by 12.57 per cent among the richest individuals survey.

Among the poorest, diabetes increased by 24 percent and by 21 percent among those without education, but decreased by 7 percent in both the richest groups and those with the highest education.

Dorairaj Prabhakaran, another member of the study team and director of Centre for Chronic Disease Control, Delhi said: "Its time to focus on bidi control, impose more taxes on alcohol to restrict consumption by the youth, launch campaigns against processed foods and encourage physical activities."