World Heart Day is an opportune time to reflect on the need to maintain a healthy heart throughout the life-course. This is especially important given cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) – including heart disease and stroke – remain the world’s number one killers, causing around 40 million deaths globally each year. Notably, an estimated 15 million (or around 37%) of those deaths are premature, meaning they occur before the age of 70.
The battle against all noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) is one of the WHO South-East Asia Region’s Flagship Priorities. That is with good reason: Every year NCDs kill 8.9 million people Region-wide, with 4.4 million succumbing to them prematurely – a disproportionate amount of the global burden. Among NCDs, CVDs are responsible for almost 3.8 million deaths, equating to around 43% of the Region’s NCD deaths, despite an estimated 80% of premature heart attacks and strokes being entirely preventable. That makes encouraging heart health – including through healthy eating, exercise and avoiding tobacco – a Region-wide priority.
Indeed, as the theme of this year’s World Heart Day, ‘My Heart – Your Heart’, emphasizes, each of us has the capacity to improve the health of our hearts and to positively influence others, such as family members, friends and colleagues, to do the same. Significantly, it also emphasizes the need for policymakers in all countries to take a whole-of-government approach to tackle the CVD burden, including through the full implementation of NCD action plans. Given each of the Region’s Member States has developed and is in the process of rolling out a multisectoral National NCD Action Plan, that message should have particular resonance.
Importantly, each country must pursue its own priorities, and should do so in a responsive manner. At the same time as addressing CVDs through encouraging healthy eating and avoiding tobacco, overweight and obesity, as well as the harmful use of alcohol, for example, reducing exposure to household air pollution from the use of solid fuels is vital where it is a problem. And in many parts of the Region it is: On average, almost 60% of households Region-wide use solid fuels as a primary source for cooking, making the need to encourage the use of other fuels at the household level a pressing need, especially in rural areas.
Naturally, the implementation of initiatives to promote heart health requires cohesive cross-sector collaboration. As part of a multi-sectoral, whole-of-government approach, the health sector has a vital role to play, especially at the primary level, where CVD risks must be averted via counselling and advice, and where they must also be detected and managed (or patients provided onward referral) as part of an integrated approach to addressing NCDs generally.
Making this happen is crucial for the Region to achieve the 25 x 25 target of a one-fourth reduction in premature NCD deaths (including from CVDs) by 2025 and a one-third reduction by 2030. To that end I reaffirm WHO’s commitment to consolidating the Region’s many gains in tackling NCDs and CVDs, to accelerating progress in rolling back their burden, and to harnessing the full power of innovation and new technology to reach the targets we can – and must – achieve.