The rise of a non-communicable disease epidemic.

Abstract

Prof. Bhome’s review of COPD in India provides important information and perspective about the worsening global COPD epidemic (1). The findings in India - increasing prevalence, DALYs lost, and mortality resulting from COPD, including a dramatic rise of COPD in rural, lower-income communities - combine with broader trends such as the increasing recognition of biomass and other fuel use as common and powerful risk factors for COPD; the urgent need for early COPD diagnosis to combat the progression of the disease; and links between COPD and pollution, fuel use, and global warming. Taken together, these pieces of evidence should serve as a red flag warning that a worldwide disease epidemic is underway, whose vectors are not micro-organisms but global human commerce and socio-economic practices.