The Vice President of India, M. Venkaiah Naidu has said that the Lifestyle changes and preventive public health should be prioritized. He was addressing the gathering after releasing the ‘India State-level Disease Burden Report and Technical Paper’, an initiative by the Indian Council of Medical Research in collaboration with Public Health Foundation of India and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (University of Washington, Seattle), here today. The Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Shri J.P. Nadda, the Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Smt. Anupriya Patel and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.The Vice President said that achieving good health for all of India’s population is an important goal of the government of India as a foundation for further social and economic development. He further said that the gap between the highest life expectancy in an Indian state and the lowest life expectancy currently is 11 years, and the difference between the state with the highest infant mortality rate and lowest rate is 4 fold.
The Vice President said that many health indicators in India continue to be poorer than some other countries at a similar level of development. He further said that this implies that while significant health improvements have happened in India, we could do better. India has had important national surveys and data from other sources that indicate significant differences in the burden of some diseases between different parts of the country, he added. The Vice President said that the report by the India State-level Disease Burden Initiative released today provides these comprehensive estimates for each state from 1990 to 2016 for the first time in India. He further said that this report, along with the technical scientific paper and the open-access visualization tool that are also released today, together provide systematic insights in to the health status of each state and the health inequalities between the states of India. High disease burden caused by malnutrition in India must be tackled soon to enable the next generation of Indians to reach their full potential in their personal development as well as the nation’s development, he added.