New Delhi: Due to chronic non-communicable diseases (CNCDs), India is expected to lose $237 billion in national income over the next 10 years, World Health Organization (WHO) said.

China will lose $558 billion, and Russia - $303 billion in the same period.

CNCDs include cardiovascular diseases (mainly heart disease and stroke), chronic respiratory diseases, some cancers and Type-2 diabetes.

Experts said that CNCDs cause 60 percent of worldwide deaths - with 80 percent occurring in low and middle income countries.

Stig Pramming, executive director of the Britain-based Oxford Health Alliance (OxHA), said, “The economic impact is enormous. It is very much the developing countries, struggling to create a healthcare system, who are now being hit by the double burden of disease – both infectious disease and these chronic diseases.”

A ‘Grand Challenges Global Partnership’ is being set up with a secretariat at OxHA and will be funded by its member organizations for first five years.

Its primary aim will be to oversee CNCD research efforts between organizations.

Professor Robert Beaglehole of Auckland University, director of WHO’s Department of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion, co-authored the paper with 18 other researchers across the world.

N K Ganguly, the former director-general of Indian Council of Medical Research, told SciDev.Net that most efforts are going into preventive measures, such as funding a health advocacy programme and establishing a large “community walking project” in Hyderabad.

Researchers made recommendations that would avert at least 36 million premature deaths by 2015.

Scientists said that smoking, sedentary lifestyle and obesity are the major causes of cardiovascular conditions mainly heart disease and stroke, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes.

Abdallah Daar, Canada-based McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health and lead author of paper, said, “The interesting thing (about CNCDs) is that they are, at an individual level, preventable by simple measures, but these are not sustained at a national level and so we need to look at policies and interventions.”