Additional municipal commissioner (western suburbs) Dr Sudhakar Shinde said that 27% of Indians died due to heart-related diseases in 2018 as per the World Health Organisation. According to BMC’s birth and death registration data, 25% of the deaths registered in the Mumbai metropolitan area in 2022 were due to heart disease and hypertension. The city had registered 94,500 deaths in 2022.
Heart problems are usually the leading cause for deaths in the city. In 2022, roughly three Mumbaikars succumbed to heart-related complications every hour in 2022, according to the BMC data. A civic official said that out of the roughly 23,000 cardiovascular deaths in the city in 2022, around 17,000 were due to ischemic heart disease or heart attacks.
Urging Mumbaikars to adopt healthy habits, BMC executive health officer Dr Daksha Shah said that STEP Survey conducted in 2021 among citizens aged 18 to 69 years found that 34% had high blood pressure and 19% had diabetes. “Nine out of every 10 Mumbaikars eat less fruits and vegetables than required,’’ she said.
For early detection and treatment of heart diseases, the BMC in August 2022 started screening centres in its various hospitals and has so far tested 2.5 lakh people above the age of 30 for blood pressure and diabetes. The BMC’s door-to-door screening programme for hypertension has so far covered over 10 lakh people. While 68,000 were suspected to have hypertension in the house surveys and sent for further confirmation, only 9,600 were found to be actually suffering from it.
One of the reasons for high levels of hypertension and subsequent heart disease could be excessive consumption of salt, said the civic health data. While the national average for daily consumption of salt is 8gm, an average Mumbaikar consumes 8.6gm daily. The WHO recommends only 5 gm of salt consumption daily.
To promote healthy lifestyle among Mumbaikars, the BMC has been providing dietary counselling which over 20,000 patients with high blood pressure and diabetes have received so far. A similar number have benefitted by participating in the 138 yoga centres started by the BMC in 2022.
Meanwhile, the annual deaths that registered a rise during the Covid pandemic years seemed to have decreased to the pre-Covid levels in 2022. The total deaths were 1.11 lakh and 1.08 lakh in 2020 and 2021 respectively, while it dropped to 94,550 in 2022 which is closer to the deaths in 2018 (92,041) and 2019 (90,339).
