It is common — and natural — to think of diseases in terms of death. Often, diseases are measured by death — so many people die of heart attacks, so many of dengue, etc. While this is important, there is another dimension not measured by body counts. It is the scale of suffering and pain felt by people who live with diseases. Talk to any middle class urban Indian and they will know of somebody who has had cancer. So, is cancer wildly spreading in India?
In the last decade, the number of people with cancer has increased 46%, one of the fastest spreads. Part of it is due to much better identification, part because of longer life, and a part also because of lifestyle and diet choices. But here’s the thing: cancer affects 0.15% of all Indians and deaths due to it were 8% of all deaths in 2016. It’s deadly, it’s spreading, but cancer is nowhere near as prevalent as we perceive anecdotally. The two health conditions that affect most Indians are nutritional deficiencies of various kinds, like protein, vitamin, iron and others — about 46% of the population suffers from this affliction — and tubercolosis, which affects nearly 39% of the population.
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