Home News and events Press Corner Media Resources Non-communicable diseases

Non-communicable diseases

A brief guide to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and their impact globally and in Bangladesh.

NCDs – diseases that cannot be passed from person to person – include cardiovascular diseases (e.g. heart attacks and stroke), cancers, chronic respiratory diseases (such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma) and diabetes.
Smoking, lack of physical activity, misuse of alcohol and unhealthy diets all increase the risk of dying from an NCD.
Four key metabolic/physiological changes increase the risk of NCDs: raised blood pressure (hypertension), overweight/obesity, high blood glucose levels (hyperglycemia) and high levels of fat in the blood (hyperlipidemia).
In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight; of these, over 650 million were obese.¹
In 2016, 39% of adults were overweight, and 13% were obese.
39 million children under five years of age were overweight or obese in 2019.
NCDs cause 41 million deaths every year, 77% of which occur in low- and middle-income countries.
NCDs are the leading cause of death in the world, accounting for 74% of all annual deaths.2
Some 17 million NCD deaths occur before the age of 70 – 86% of these ‘premature’ deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.
In South Asia, NCDs account for more than half of annual mortality.^3,4
NCDs also pose a huge threat to development and economic growth; they have been estimated to cost health systems globally an estimated US$47 trillion between 2010 and 2030.⁵

NCDs accounted for an estimated 70% of total deaths in Bangladesh in 2019.⁶
In Bangladesh, 52% of men smoke; 1 out of 5 adults have hypertension.^7,8
There were about 13.14 million cases of diabetes in Bangladesh in 2021.⁹
An estimated 75,617 deaths were attributed to diabetes in 2021.