The Burden of Elderly’s Non-Communicable Diseases in Iran

This paper should be cited as: Emamgholipour S.The Burden of Elderly’s Non-CommunicableDiseases in Iran. Evidence Based Health Policy,Management & Economics. 2017; 1(3): 128-30.ll diseases can be examined in three groupswith regard to disability and mortalityburden: 1. Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs),2. Communicable diseases, congenital diseases,infant diseases, accidents and 3. injuries. Non-Communicable Diseases are the main causes ofmortality and disability in the world. The WorldEconomic Forum (WEF) estimates that NCDs willresult in a global economic loss by US $ 47 trillionor 5% of the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP)during 2011-2030. In this regard, cardiovasculardiseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, anddiabetes may account for US $30 trillion loss (1).This figure will be higher if the individuals utilityloss due to diseases is accounted for. The ratio ofDisability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) forpeople 65 + to total DALYs generated by NCDsamong all age groups was 25% in 2015. Non-Communicable Diseases are avoidable throughlow-cost preventive health interventions. Theexperiences of highly developed countries showthat decreasing the Risk Factors (RFs) rather thanthe medical cares can reduce the mortality ratesoriginating from NCDs. In this way, a three-dollarreturn can be expected for one-dollar investment inpreventing NCDs. Obviously, more recent medicalinterventions reported up to 10-fold more benefits(2). The burden of NCDs can be analyzed in twophases: first, this group of diseases may reduce thelongevity and increase the mortality among all agegroups; second, they can affect Quality of Life(QoL) and reduce it.