TEHRAN — A shift in sickness has changed the global health perspective, as the top diseases in Iran are now chronic illnesses rather than infectious diseases.
In a recent study presented by an academic emergency medical journal, data was gathered on 11,315 Iranian people. During the one-month study on graduate students and their families, 360 of those 11,315 subjects died. The cause in more than 26 percent of those deaths was due to cardiovascular disease, one of the top disease in Iran.
Among other top diseases in Iran, cancers represented 11 percent of those deaths, and three percent of those 360 deaths were caused by either diabetes or lower-respiratory infections.
In reference to the country’s maternal mortality rate, there were a recorded 25 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015, which is very few in comparison to other nations and on par with the U.S. More concerning is the number of infants who died during birth that year, around 37 per 1,000 births.
Life expectancy at birth in Iran is higher than average, ranking 153rd out of 224 countries. The country used nearly seven percent of its gross domestic product on health expenditures in 2014, and there was just one hospital bed per 10,000 people in 2012.
With an intermediate degree of risk, bacterial diarrhea and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever are the country’s top waterborne and vector-borne infectious diseases respectively.
The bacterial infection tuberculosis is not uncommon in Iran, with a mortality rate of 1.8 per 100,000 people. Giardiasis is the most common parasitic infection there.
As of 2012, there were nearly 92,000 people reportedly living in Iran with HIV, and between 6,000 and 6,500 people die annually from AIDS. The main cause of death for persons with HIV is tuberculosis.
With a 2014 obesity prevalence rate just less than 25 percent, the most common hospital-acquired infections in Iran were urinary tract infections, pneumonia, surgical site infections and bloodstream infections. The overall mortality rate of patients with these types of infection was 14.8 percent that year.
According to the CIA World Fact Book, more that 92 percent of the rural population in Iran had access to improved drinking water in 2015. In total, 96.2 percent of the Iranian population drank from an improved water source that year.
In regards to sanitation facilities, more than 17 percent of the country’s rural population live without the use of the following facilities; flush or pour-flush to a piped sewer system, septic tank or pit latrine, ventilated improved pit latrine, pit latrine with slab, or a composting toilet. Around 90 percent of the country’s population in 2015 had access to these types of sanitation facilities.
The shift in sickness in the top diseases in Iran has altered the global health perspective as the country continues to improve drinking water systems and sanitation facilities. The top diseases in Iran are no longer infectious but now chronic illnesses like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and heart disease.
– Shaun Savarese
Photo: Flickr