Chronic diseases increased threats to Beijing residents

Chronic noninfectious diseases are causing increasing threats to people's health in Beijing, according to a report released by the Beijing municipal government on Wednesday.

Overall health in Beijing kept improving last year, with life expectancy for residents with a hukou, or household registration, reaching 82.15 years, an increase of 0.12 years over 2016, according to the report.

Other major indexes for health, such as mortality rates for children under 5 years old and for pregnant women, also improved in Beijing last year, and some health indexes in Beijing are on the same level with high-income countries, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning said.

However, incidences of some major chronic diseases kept increasing last year, and they continue to be top killers for Beijing residents, according to the report.

Last year, the top three causes of deaths for Beijing residents were cancer, heart diseases and brain vascular diseases, and they accounted for more than 71 percent of the total number of deaths in Beijing.

Worse, mortality rates of cancer patients in Beijing rose by 3.6 percent last year compared with 2016, while mortality rates of patients with heart diseases rose by 5.2 percent over 2016, the report said. Mortality rates for patients with brain vascular diseases saw a slight decline last year, the report said.

With an increasingly older population, chronic diseases are expected to cause greater threats to the health of Beijing residents over the next few years, and urgent measures are needed for the prevention and control of chronic diseases in Beijing, according to Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning.