A Comparative Study Of Prevalence Of Non-Communicable Diseases In Families Belonging To Three Socio-Economic Groups In Mumbai

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), also known as chronic diseases, are not passed from one person to another. The NCDs include cardiovascular diseases (like heart attacks and stroke), cancers, chronic respiratory diseases (such as chronic obstructed pulmonary disease and asthma), diabetes etc. The objective of the present study was to compare the prevalence of NCDs focusing mainly on Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and Cardio-Vascular Diseases (CVD)/Hypertension (HTN) in High Socio-Economic Groups (HSEG), Middle Socio-Economic Groups (MSEG) and Low Socio-Economic Groups (LSEG) staying in Mumbai. A total of 14 municipal wards in Mumbai Metropolitan Region were selected by simple random sampling method. A questionnaire was used to collect information on the general background of the families, and incidence of non-communicable diseases in the families. 100 families from each SEG were selected by snowball sampling from 14 Mumbai Metropolitan wards. The results showed that the prevalence of DM was 14% in HSEG as compared to 11% in MSEG and 9% in LSEG. CVD/HTN prevalence was 10% in MSEG and comparatively lower in LSEG and HSEG. It was concluded that the prevalence of NCDs were slightly lower in LSEG compared to other two SEG.