Addressing Cardiovascular Disease Burden in low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs)

The global epidemic of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is spiraling upwards primarily due to a sharp rise in the low and middle income countries (LMICs) which are experiencing rapid health transition driven by socioeconomic, technological and lifestyle changes. LMICs currently face a double burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases, leading to competing claims of health conditions that vie for policy makers’ attention as public health priorities in a setting of limited resources, substantially high out-of-pocket expenditure and weak systems of healthcare delivery. Evidence from high income countries suggests that most CVDs are largely preventable as the major CVD risk behaviours including tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, harmful use of alcohol, are avoidable and modifiable. Effective and sustainable behaviour change strategies for LMICs would require low cost, affordable and scalable interventions. There is limited evidence from LMICs on effective interventions to prevent, control and manage CVDs in LMICs. The global guidelines and framework for addressing CVD calls for an urgent need to identify and assess contextually relevant and resource sensitive health care interventions augmented by policy actions. A combination of population based and high risk individual based strategies which are evidence based, cost-effective, feasible as well as scalable would reduce CVD mortality and its devastating impact in LMICs.