Nutrition and chronic diseases--Indian experience

Socio-economic changes are taking place all over the world, especially in developing countries, and these influence all aspects of life an all age periods. Resultant disparities have brought about alarming and increasing manifestations of malnutrition and non-communicable disease. Illiteracy, poor health facilities have damaging effects on children. Raising the literacy of girls and adolescents will reduce the leading cause of malnutrition in children, since these future, better educated mothers will be responsible for the children's welfare: child care status with mother care. Protein calorie sufficiency is only present in approximately 60% of the rural population of India: the remainder has differing degrees of malnutrition. When they move into better socio-economic status people are at increased risk from coronary heart disease and diabetes mellitus, for which several theoretical explanations have been proposed. There is a difference in the patterns of these diseases in urban and rural populations, the exact basis for which is not yet clear. For example, in the 25-64 years age group, coronary heart disease prevalence in Delhi is 97/1,000 while in a rural area it is 27/1,000, while the respective figures for hypertension are 127/1,000 and 29/1,000. The patterns in both groups have changed within 3-5 years. The geriatric age group has its own, changing features, due to increasing longevity of life, and to break up of social customs and family structure.