Heart Disease Afflicts Many In Third World

Heart disease is the top cause of death - not only in richer nations where many people eat too much fattening food, but in poorer countries as well.

In fact, most people struck down by heart attacks live in the Third World, which researchers Christopher J.L. Murray and Alan D. Lopez acknowledged “is at odds with the popular perception.”

In a study released Friday and to appear in today’s issue of the British medical magazine The Lancet, they examine the causes of the 50.4 million deaths worldwide in 1990.

AIDS placed last on the list of the 30 top causes of death, well below many other diseases as well as war, car crashes, drownings and suicides.

Ischemic heart disease - which includes heart attacks - killed 6.3 million people that year. Just 2.7 million of those deaths occurred in industrial nations.

Strokes were next at 4.4 million - almost 3 million in developing countries. Acute respiratory infections - like pneumonia and other lung infections - followed closely at 4.3 million, 3.9 million of them in developing countries.

The other leading causes of death worldwide were diarrhea-type diseases, almost all of them in developing countries; chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases; tuberculosis; measles; low birth weight; traffic accidents and lung cancer.

“Worldwide, these top 10 causes account for 52 percent of all deaths,” said the researchers - Murray of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and Lopez of the World Health Organization in Geneva.

The report was requested by the World Bank in 1992. It is the first of four planned under the Global Burden of Disease Study and was prepared with help from the U.N. World Health Organization.