Deaths from chronic illnesses appear set to equal or surpass those from infectious diseases in many Third World countries by the year 2000, a World Health Organization official said Monday.
Dr. Alan Lopez, senior epidemiologist on the WHO's Tobacco or Health Program in Geneva, said this would occur as the disease pattern in the developing world began to mirror the West's.Chronic illnesses like heart disease are defined as being of gradual onset and long duration while infectious diseases such as the AIDS virus are spread by contagion.
Speaking at a Royal Society conference on Strategies for Chronic Disease Control, Lopez said another alarming feature of global mortality patterns was the falling life expectancy among men in many eastern European countries. This was partly due to a rise in major chronic diseases.