Regardless of which province it happens in, in Canada in 2025 absolutely nobody should be dying of friggin’ measles. We defeated that disease with sound public health policy, yet somehow we’ve invited it back onto the pitch. That’s absurd.
Because heart disease doesn't need the competition ....
Heart disease back as top global killer as study highlights 'toll' of chronic conditions, rising youth deaths
New global study also calls attention to ‘deaths of despair’ among teens, younger adults
Heart disease, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) took the top spots in the latest 2023 data, with COVID dropping from the leading cause of global death in 2021 to the 20th spot just two years later.
Infectious disease deaths in general — including those linked to measles and tuberculosis — have gone down, while chronic conditions that aren’t contagious, such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and drug use disorders, are on the rise.
Patients and researchers warn these slow-burn health threats don’t always get as much attention as a global crisis, yet their impact on people’s health and well-being remains massive.
“It's not as dramatic as an outbreak,” said Michael Brauer, principal research scientist at the
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and a professor at the University of British Columbia. “But we still, I think, do not appreciate the toll that these chronic diseases take.”
Brauer is among a team of 16,500 researchers who have been analyzing global death data on hundreds of diseases across more than 200 countries and territories since 1990.
In Canada, he said the latest data shows heart disease, lung cancer and Alzheimer’s are the top three causes of deaths. Another concerning trend, he told CBC News, is that while overall global mortality is trending down and life expectancy is going up, there are spikes in death rates among teens and young adults in various parts of the world, this country included.