International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | August 2021 | Vol 8 | Issue 8 Page 4094 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Verma A et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2021 Aug;8(8):4094-4101 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Review Article Non-communicable diseases’ risk factors in India: a review of the current situation Anjana Verma 1 *, Ashish Patyal 2 , Medha Mathur 1 , Navgeet Mathur 3 , Shiv Virmani 4 INTRODUCTION Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) mainly heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke and chronic lung disease are responsible for almost 70% of all deaths worldwide. About three fourth of all NCD related deaths, and majority (82%) of the people who die prematurely, or before reaching 70 years of age, occur in the developing countries. 1 The age of onset for NCDs is generally more than 55 years, however in India, they present almost a decade earlier. 2 Another concern is the late diagnosis, due to lack of awareness and health care access. Moreover, patients usually present with complications or multiple chronic conditions, which further exacerbates the problem. India is still fighting the menace of infectious diseases, with various diseases like tuberculosis and measles yet to be eliminated. Hence dealing with the dual burden of communicable and NCD pose considerable challenges to the public health system of country. India’s commitment to the sustainable development goals is reflected in adopting World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) global action plan for the prevention and control of NCDs (2013-2020). India is also the first country to develop specific national targets and indicators aimed at reducing the number of premature deaths from NCDs by 2025. 3 The rising burden of NCDs necessitates the availability of data on burden and risk factors for research purpose and policy making. For conducting this review, we searched the PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases for the following keywords: NCD; risk factor; prevention; India; and epidemiology, through all types of articles, without a language and time restriction. REVIEW OF THE MAJOR RISK FACTORS Obesity Obesity is a considerable public health problem, and its increasing prevalence in many developing and developed nations has led to a global challenge. Obesity and ABSTRACT Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are responsible for considerable morbidity and mortality, leading to a significant burden on the health care systems in developing countries like India. Despite heavy burden, there is no regular system of collection of good quality representative data on NCDs or their risk factors in India. The published review articles show the trends of risk factors, however only for one or few more risk factors, thereby rendering them non comprehensive. This paper examines the updated data and epidemiology of all the NCD risk factors, to provide the summary estimates of their prevalence at national level. A thorough knowledge on current status of risk factors is required to formulate the policies and programmes, so that the rising burden of NCDs can be tackled. Keywords: NCD, Risk factors, Burden, India 1 Department of Community Medicine, Geetanjali Medical College, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India 2 Neuroanaesthesia, Walton Centre, Liverpool, United Kingdom 3 Department of Medicine, 4 Geetanjali medical College, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India Received: 15 June 2021 Accepted: 17 July 2021 *Correspondence: Dr. Anjana Verma, E-mail: anjanaverma504@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20213048