Summary and discussion of results
In Nepal, DALYs rate for NCDs decreased by 2% from 1990 to 2017, CMNN during the same time decreased by 83% and injuries decreased by 34% in Nepal. CVD was the leading cause of disease burden in 2017 with 3,859 DALYs per 100,000 population. Among 40 years or older population, NCDs and injuries were responsible for 75–82% of total DALYs. CVDs, chronic respiratory diseases and neoplasms were the top three leading causes of DALYs in this age group. Injuries, self-harm and violence, mental, neurological and musculoskeletal disorders superseded CVDs to become the leading contributors of DALYs in young population aged 15–35 years.
Interpretation of findings
Our findings are interesting yet expected given Nepal’s epidemiological and demographic transition and are comparable to countries in the South Asia region. Particularly, CVD was the leading cause of deaths overall and among older adults in Nepal. An earlier study using American Heart Association’s seven metrics of risk factors (smoking, alcohol, fruits and vegetable intake, physical activity, hypertension, diabetes, obesity) found a low prevalence of ideal cardiovascular health that deteriorated with aging in urban population of Nepal [20]. The dietary and demographic transition has predisposed more population to high calorie diet, sedentary lifestyle and resulted in increased cardiovascular deaths [20, 21].
Another important challenge is the growing burden of chronic respiratory diseases in Nepal. The disease is closely related to the burden of tobacco consumption and indoor air pollution, including widespread use of biomass stoves [22]. Indoor air pollution is the major cause of deaths overall as well as the leading cause of deaths among women in Nepal [23]. Women are particularly affected due to their higher exposure to indoor environment. Men who have a prior history of tobacco smoking, are also at higher risk of respiratory diseases. Particularly those from poorer households were mostly affected [24].
Cancer is the third leading cause of deaths and sixth leading cause of DALYs in Nepal. The burden is particularly higher in older adults. Despite the growth in the burden, affordable treatment services remained unavailable to majority of the population [25]. Musculoskeletal disorders related to ergonomic (work related factors such as force, repetition and posture) and individual risk factors (poor work practices, fitness and health habits) are the fifth leading cause of DALYs and (first) leading cause of YLDs. In addition to curative services, preventive initiatives aimed at improving posture and work-loads for agrarian populations, expanded treatment services are needed to address this growing burden of musculoskeletal disorders, including physiatrist and physiotherapy services [26].
Besides that, injuries in Nepal has become a prominent cause of deaths corroborating with an earlier study [27]. Our analysis showed that injuries were the leading cause of deaths among young population. Of note, injuries of all kind, and particularly transport injuries, have increased after the 2015 earthquakes. Reconstruction efforts is reported to have increased road traffic accidents with a corresponding increase in traffic and congestion [28].
Burden of disease data from local studies
Diabetes, CKD, CAD, hypertension, overweight/obesity, tobacco consumption, were more common in provinces with relatively higher affluence [9, 16, 22, 29, 30]. Particularly, burden of hypertension, overweight/obesity, and tobacco smoking were higher in province 4. Province 6 and 7, on the other hand, have a comparatively low burden of hypertension and overweight/obesity, and higher burden of tobacco smoking, indoor air pollution and COPD (Supplementary Fig. 9). Such geographical variation in disease risk factors further warrants a detailed exploration in future studies. These conditions were typically associated with older age groups. The prevalence of these diseases were the lowest among the young age group (20–39 years): Diabetes (3.1%), CKD (2.6%), CAD (1.7%) and COPD (6.7%), and highest among older adults (≥ 60 years): Diabetes (13.3%), CKD (11.5%), CAD (2.8%) and COPD (21.5%) [30].
The Nepal Health Research Council Health Research Council, a regulatory body for health research in Nepal has launched a Population Based Cancer Registry (PBCR) in Nepal since January 2018. Although the findings of the cancer registry are yet to be made public, the interim analysis of the Kathmandu valley has found the highest incidence of cancer among females compared to males and in the older age groups: 230.5 per 100, 000 in 70–74 years old followed by 203 per 100, 000 in 65–69 years old. The top three leading cancer sites in males were lungs, lip and oral cavity and gastrointestinal cancers. Similarly breast, lungs and cervix were the top three leading cancer sites in females [31].
Implications for policy and programmatic improvement
In response to the growing burden of NCDs, the national Multi-Sectoral Action Plan on the ‘Prevention and Control of NCDs 2014–2020’ targets to reduce NCDs by 25% by 2025 aligning with SDG goals [6]. The government of Nepal has adopted the World Health Organizations’ package of essential NCD (PEN) to deliver NCD health services at primary healthcare level [10] in response to the growing burden of NCDs. A package such as this would roughly cost 8.8 USD per capita (1·4% of GDP) at primary health care level [32].
The availability of health services is poor with wide rural and urban disparities. A previous national report found 93·2% of primary health care facilities had adequate readiness to provide services for CVD, 75·6% for diabetes and 98·5% for chronic respiratory diseases [32]. However, this picture of readiness does not reveal about the actual availability of health services as most of the health facilities do not have a calibrated equipment, trained human resource in place, and year-round availability of medicines. For example, only 0·5% of primary health care facilities have trained their health staffs to provide cardiovascular services, and there is low availability of essential CVD medicines at these facilities (only 14%, and 18·2% of these facilities had aspirin and amlodipine—two key CVD drugs) [33].
Tackling growing burden of NCDs requires financial protection from NCDs related expenditures. Nearly 48% of health expenditure in Nepal is paid out-of-pocket (OOP), and of this, nearly 88% is spent on medicines [34]. The high OOP expenditure is particularly due to heavy reliance on private health services which is not covered by insurance schemes. Nearly 40 USD per capita per person is spent in health, and nearly 12 USD is spent in medicines [7]. Providing financial protection from OOP is an important health priority in the country, however is inadequate. Further, a pilot insurance program was launched in 2015 which is yet to become fully operational [8].
NCDs have an improvising impact in the population due to highly priced diagnostics, medicines and medical services. To address this, the PEN which provides financial protection up to $916 USD per year for treatment of major NCDs was proposed to support treatment of NCDs among poor and vulnerable population [25]. Despite high hopes, only a limited progress has been seen so far on its implementation [25].
Future implications for research
Given the limitations of the modelled GBD data, we need more local data points that can be collected at low cost by incorporating NCDI indicators in future surveys and creating disease and death registries and at national and sub-national level. Further efforts should be placed in developing local information management system which can be used to capture disease events across the population. While this study is the first national assessment, further studies should delve deeper into the geographic heterogeneity in the burden of key NCDs and their risk factors.
Strengths and limitations
The main strengths of this study are following: i) this is the first nationwide assessment on NCDI that captures both the global and local data, and ii) the standard GBD methodology was used allowing for regional comparison among countries from the South Asia region. The limitations of this study are the general limitations on GBD as discussed elsewhere.[1, 35] In brief, i) Nepal does not have a functional cause of death reporting system, ii) the disaggregated data by age, sex, provinces were not available for major disease outcomes such as chronic respiratory diseases, mental disorders and musculoskeletal diseases, and iii) imputation methodology was used when Nepal data sources was not available. To improve our modelling capacity, we need more data from Nepal in the future.