The burden of chronic diseases increases as a super-aged society enters.

[Anchor]
As the elderly population increases, the number of deaths from chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases continues to increase.

As the burden of chronic diseases is expected to increase in the future due to the entry into a super-aged society, the government is struggling to come up with strategies to reduce the burden.

This is reporter Lee Moon-seok.

[Reporter]
Last year, 78% of deaths in Korea were patients with chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

In terms of teenage causes of death, cancer and heart disease ranked first and second, and six diseases, including cerebrovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure, were chronic diseases.

It's not just a lot of deaths.

Medical expenses for chronic diseases also increased every year, accounting for 84.5% of the total medical expenses from 71 trillion won in 2020 to 90.6 trillion won last year.

The prevalence rate, which is the proportion of patients in the total population, remained unchanged at around 21% for hypertension and 10% for diabetes.

However, hypercholesterolemia has changed from 11% in 2022 to 22% in 10 years, and obesity has also risen by nearly 5% in 10 years.

Health officials predicted that the burden of chronic disease-related deaths and diseases will increase in the future along with the entry into a super-aged society.

[Park Chan-soo / Director of Chronic Disease Division, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Introduce a disease burden calculation system for chronic diseases.Or even more efforts to establish such a scientific basis to further refine the surveillance analysis system....]

At least, the health risk factors affecting chronic diseases have slightly improved.

As of 2022, the current smoking rate was 17.7%, down more than 8% from 10 years ago, and the aerobic physical activity practice rate also rose for the second consecutive year to 53.1%.

I'm YTN's Lee Munseok.

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video: Juyeon Lee

Design: Jeon Whee-lin