Cardiovascular Disease in Non-Western Countries

Concern about increasing rates of death and disability due to cardiovascular disease in non-Western countries is often met with skepticism: Do they really constitute a serious public health problem? With justifiable alarm about the spread of human immunodeficiency virus and AIDS and with old foes such as malaria and tuberculosis still posing formidable challenges in many developing countries, it is understandable that epidemics of cardiovascular disease have insidiously established themselves without attracting global attention or local action. The fact that 80 percent of deaths from cardiovascular disease worldwide and 87 percent of related disability currently occur in low-income and middle-income . . .