DEATHS due to stroke are expected to increase to 10 million annually by 2050, a staggering 50 per cent surge, the Lancet Neurology Commission has projected.
This projection, which comes from the collaborative effort of the World Stroke Organisation and the Lancet Neurology Commission, under which four studies have been published, indicates a soar in deaths from 6.6 million in 2020 to 9.7 million by 2050, with the major burden on low and middle-income countries (LMICs).
According to the report, “the absolute number of people affected by stroke, which includes those who die or remain disabled, has almost doubled in the past 30 years.”
Stroke is the second-leading cause of death worldwide, and the burden of disability after a stroke is also large. Multiple factors contribute to the high burden of stroke in low- and middle-income countries, including undetected and uncontrolled hypertension, air pollution, unhealthy lifestyles (poor diet, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, obesity) and the burden of infectious diseases.
It declared that the fastest growth in deaths from intracerebral haemorrhage (when there’s bleeding inside the brain) in 2050 is likely to occur in sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, due to hypertension and thus support a call for improved prevention and treatment of hypertension.
The report, published in The Lancet Neurology Commission on October 9, said the incidence of stroke is increasing in young and middle-aged people under 55 years.
It declared, “In this commission, we forecast the burden of stroke from 2020 to 2050. We project that stroke mortality will increase by 50 percent — from 6.6 million in 2020 to 9.7 million in 2050 — with disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) growing over the same period from 144.8 million in 2020 to 189.3 million in 2050.
“Should these trends continue, Sustainable Development Goal 3.4 (reducing the burden of stroke as part of the general target to reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases by a third by 2030) will not be met.”
While the pace of the overall increase in the stroke burden from 2020 to 2050 is slower than that from 1990 – 2019, the burden of stroke is still higher in LMICs, Nigeria inclusive.
According to the report, most of the contemporary stroke burden — 86 percent of global deaths and 89 percent of global DALYs lost because of stroke in 2020 — is in low- and middle-income countries.
By 2050, it is estimated that the contribution of stroke deaths in LMICs will increase from 86 percent to 91 percent. It is also said that the burden of stroke is increasing faster in LMICs than in high-income countries (HICs). India also falls under LMICs.
They suggested that, given that the incidence of stroke rises with age, the combination of growing populations and ageing demographics is likely to result in large increase in global deaths and disability in the future, unless major improvements occur in population prevention programmes that reduce the risk of stroke.
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