"There is not one country, one community left untouched by cancer, stroke, heart disease or respiratory disease," Dr. Catherine Le Gales-Camus, the WHO's assistant director general for noncommunicable diseases. . .

For the Asia-Pacific region, there is more reason to worry at the deaths linked to chronic ailments, she warned, since over 70 percent of the people who will die in the next 10 years from such diseases will be from this region. That amounts to 270 million deaths from 53 countries in the region out of an estimated 388 million deaths globally by 2015. [Emphasis mine]

The estimated global toll due to health-related deaths in 2005 offers sufficient reason for the public health community to raise the alarm. Of the nearly 58 million deaths from all causes the last year, it was projected that chronic diseases would account for 35 million deaths worldwide.

These numbers -- 17.5 million deaths due to cardiovascular disease, 7.5 million deaths due to cancer and 4.05 million deaths due to chronic respiratory diseases -- tower over the annual death toll in 2005 from the three widely known major infectious diseases. The latter includes 2.8 million deaths due to HIV/AIDS, 1.6 million deaths due to tuberculosis and 883,000 deaths due to malaria.

In some Asian countries, according to the WHO, the death toll from chronic diseases account for nearly 50 percent of annual cases, such as in Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. While in other countries the toll is higher, such as Indonesia having over 60 percent of its citizens dying due to chronic diseases and for China, Iran, Fiji, and Brunei the annual figure accounting for over 70 percent of the deaths.

"This growing epidemic has substantial macro-economic impact on the economies of the region," says Kim Hak-Su, executive secretary of ESCAP. "Countries in the region, such as China, India and the Russian Federation, could forego billions of dollars in national income over the next 10 years as a result of chronic diseases." [Emphasis mine]

According to the article, China and India have devoted 2.2% and 1.3%, respectively, of their GDP to public health. Japan and Australia are at 6.5%.