Rationale for Action(cont...)

Health Sector Perspective

To fully capitalize on the demographic dividend, healthy aging is necessary, which in turn, requires tackling NCDs. But many opportunities for their prevention and control are available. Experience from developed countries indicates that the increase in CVD during a similar phase of the epidemiologic transition could be blunted and even dramatically reduced by changes in risk levels within the population and through primary care for NCDs.

In the United States, as in other developed countries, disability rates among the surviving elderly population have been declining by 0.5–1.5 percent annually (Cutler and Sheiner 1998; Maton and Gu 2001). More recent examples are also evident. In Poland in the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a shift from subsidized dietary saturated fats derived from animal sources to more unsaturated fats from plant sources resulted in a dramatic reduction in

CVD deaths. In Chapter 4, these opportunities are more carefully examined.