Global Cardiovascular Strategies

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CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE PANDEMICS:
THE GLOBAL VIEW ON MORTALITY AND RISK FACTORS
E Farinaro¹, S Stranges², E Della Valle¹, G Guglielmucci², A Cajafa², M Triassi² and A Chockalingam^3
1Dept. of Preventive Medical Sciences, Institute of Occupational Medicine, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
²Dept. of Preventive Medical Sciences, Institute of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
³Adult Health Division, Health Canada, Ottawa, Canada

 

Epidemiological scenario

Economic progress and consequentially changes in social organisation, have always marked deeply the disease profile of human societies. The increase in life expectancy which leads to a larger proportion of older adults in the population and the shift from infectious diseases to chronic life-style-related disorders as the dominant public health problems symbolize the aspects of humanity’s evolution (^1-6).

A socio-economic grouping of the World’s countries identifies three major areas: the Established Market Economies (EME), enclosing Northern America, Western Europe and most of Australasia; countries with Economies in Transition (EIT), the former socialist nations of Central and Eastern Europe; the last area is where the majority of the World population resides, the so called Developing Countries (DC), which comprises most of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle Eastern Crescent, an heterogeneous mixture of economical, social and political conditions all associated with the attempt at an initial industrialisation. Each of these three categories hold a different and quite definite social and health profile, as documented by the sensitive indicators used to evaluate the health-status of a community. It must also be underlined that, inside each grouping, considerable differences can be noted both between countries as inside any specific nation because of the considerable influence played by social factors which, alone, often represent the main determinants of the health status of a population.

The Report of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the year 1997 still shows, as the leading cause of death in the World, infectious diseases (32%), but the toll paid by cardiovascular diseases is continuously rising, especially in the developing countries, whilst in the industrialised nations they are now starting to display a stationary trend, even if they still remain by far the leading cause of mortality (46%) (⁴).