INTERVIEW-China battling with lifestyle-related diseases

HONG KONG, March 19 (Reuters) - Chronic diseases such as strokes, cancer, and respiratory and heart conditions are China's biggest health problem, the health minister said on Friday, urging citizens to change lifestyle habits.

While infectious diseases like tuberculosis figured high on China's list 10 to 20 years ago, the country is now plagued by lifestyle-related illnesses that have more to do with people having too much to eat and not taking enough exercise.

In an interview with Reuters on Friday, Health Minister Chen Zhu said one out of every five deaths in China was due to strokes - which is linked to risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol and smoking.

"The biggest health problems are strokes, cancer, respiratory diseases, cardiac diseases," Chen said by telephone.

In fifth place were deaths due to traffic and work-related accidents, followed by suicides, which totalled about 180,000 annually, said the minister, who is a molecular biologist and hematologist by training.

"Chronic diseases make up the first four and have to do with lifestyle and are a huge financial burden. They make up 80 percent of mortality and health expenditure," he said.

China's total mortality figure was 8.49 million in 2005, of which 22.2 percent was due to strokes. Cancer made up 22.1 percent, followed by respiratory diseases at 15.8 percent and cardiac diseases at 14.7 percent.

To reverse the threat from such chronic lifestyle diseases, China is putting in place primary prevention programmes to promote health education and mass screening for diseases like diabetes and hypertension, Chen said.

HEALTHCARE REFORMS

China launched a US$124 billion healthcare reform campaign in April 2008 to create a universal medical insurance system, make essential drugs available and improve public healthcare.

"China has a 1.33 billion population and 1.23 billion are covered (by basic insurance). Some 100 million are not covered and these are migrants, elderly and children in cities and people in small enterprises," he said.

"I hope that next year, a part of these 100 million people who are still uninsured ... will be brought in."

Chen stressed the need to fight ignorance.

While hypertension is the chief cause of strokes, fewer than half of Chinese with hypertension know they have the disease.

"Only 45 percent of people know they have hypertension, 60 percent don't know they have the disease. Only 28 percent of people with hypertension are taking anti-hypertension drugs and only 8 percent have good blood pressure control," Chen said.

Chen is determined to fight smoking, which is a risk factor for most of these chronic illnesses.

"Last year, we raised tobacco taxes but that was for high grade cigarettes. What we are proposing is to increase taxes for middle and low grade cigarettes," Chen said.

"Many Chinese smokers are under the age of 20, so once taxes go up, the number of smokers will be significantly reduced ... once you raise taxes, you kill two birds with one stone. You bring down number of smokers and you also bring in revenue. My colleagues will support me," he said.

REUTERS