India Chronic Disease Trends: Most Deaths Now Come From NCDs

A health worker checking a man's blood pressure in Howrah
File photo: a blood pressure check in Howrah, West Bengal. Photo: Biswarup Ganguly via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.
Burden risingUpdated 18 October 2026

Trend summary

  • Non-communicable diseases caused 56.7% of all deaths in India in 2021–23, according to the Sample Registration System. Cardiovascular disease alone accounted for nearly 31%.
  • The NCD share of deaths rose from 37.9% in 1990 to 61.8% in 2016, on ICMR’s state-level disease burden estimates. Infections and maternal causes have steadily shrunk as a share.
  • The ICMR-INDIAB survey (2023) found 11.4% of adults with diabetes, 15.3% with prediabetes and 35.5% with hypertension. The government puts this at about 101 million people with diabetes.
  • Estimated new cancer cases rose from 1.39 million in 2020 to 1.53 million in 2024. The government’s screening programme had checked over 400 million adults for high blood pressure by February 2026.
56.7%Share of deaths from NCDs, 2021–23
30.9%Deaths from cardiovascular disease, 2021–23
101 millionPeople with diabetes (ICMR-INDIAB, 2023)
1.53 millionEstimated new cancer cases, 2024

What the numbers show

India’s causes of death have changed fast. ICMR’s India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative found that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) rose from 37.9% of deaths in 1990 to 61.8% in 2016 (PIB, Feb 2022). Over the same years, their share of total health loss (DALYs) went from 30% to 55%, with ischaemic heart disease the top cause and COPD second (ICMR, Nov 2017). WHO’s 2018 country profile put NCDs at 63% of India’s 9.57 million deaths in 2016: cardiovascular disease 27%, chronic respiratory disease 11%, cancers 9% and diabetes 3%. It gave a 23% risk of dying from one of the four main NCDs between ages 30 and 70, though WHO flags these estimates as highly uncertain (WHO).

The Registrar General’s Sample Registration System, which records deaths in a nationally representative sample of households, gives the current picture. Its cause-of-death report for 2021–23, published in September 2025, attributes 56.7% of deaths to NCDs. Cardiovascular disease caused about 30.9%, cancers 6.4%, chronic respiratory disease 5.7% and diabetes 3.5% (ORGI; The Hitavada). Stroke killed an estimated 699,000 people in 2019, or 7.4% of all deaths (ICMR, 2021).

Cancer is climbing steadily. ICMR’s National Cancer Registry Programme estimated 1,392,179 new cases (13.9 lakh) in 2020 and 1,461,427 in 2022, with estimated deaths rising from 770,230 to 808,558 (PIB, Jul 2023). The estimate for 2024 is 1,533,055 cases (Lok Sabha, Jul 2024), and for 2025 it is 1,569,793. In 2024, lung cancer was the most common cancer in men (79,279 cases) and breast cancer in women (227,152) (Lok Sabha, Mar 2025).

What is driving it

Metabolic risk is the main engine. The ICMR-INDIAB study, which surveyed 113,043 adults in all states between 2008 and 2020, found diabetes in 11.4%, prediabetes in 15.3%, hypertension in 35.5%, generalised obesity in 28.6% and abdominal obesity in 39.5% (Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, 2023). The government says over 101 million people live with diabetes and another 136 million have prediabetes (PIB, Dec 2024). People also live longer: life expectancy has risen from about 40 in 1960 to about 70, so more reach the ages when these diseases strike (PIB, 2017).

Tobacco remains a big factor. Tobacco-linked cancers made up 27.1% of the estimated 2020 cancer burden (ICMR, 2020), and the government says tobacco kills over 1.3 million people a year (PIB, Jun 2026). Some of the rise is better counting: more cancer registries and mass screening find cases that once went unrecorded (PIB, Sep 2020). The burden is uneven. Rates of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and COPD differ four- to nine-fold between states (PIB, 2017), and the North East carries a high cancer burden, with male incidence reaching 269.4 per 100,000 in Aizawl (ICMR-NCDIR, 2021).

Recent cases

  • 6 June 2026: A government briefing on India’s health record said NCDs such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and stroke now account for 60% of all deaths. It also said 415 million people (41.5 crore) had been screened for hypertension since 2017 (PIB).
  • 23 March 2026: The Health Ministry told Parliament that by February 2026 its NCD programme had screened about 409 million adults for hypertension and found 70.1 million cases, and screened 407 million for diabetes, finding 46.8 million (PIB).
  • 3 September 2025: The Registrar General published the Sample Registration System cause-of-death report for 2021–23. It found that NCDs caused 56.7% of deaths and cardiovascular disease nearly 31% (ORGI; The Hitavada).

Press releases and official reports, 2023–2026

Up to five key releases a year for the last four years, newest first. Most come from Government of India ministries through the Press Information Bureau (PIB), national agencies such as NCRB, the Reserve Bank of India and the National Center for Seismology, and state governments; a few news reports and data analyses are included where they are the clearest public record of an event. Releases from 2007–2022 are in the expandable list after 2023.

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2025

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2023

View 20 years of major Indian chronic disease press releases (2007–2026)47 more from 2007–2022, up to five a year, newest first

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2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2010

2009

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2007

Many years list fewer than five items, and some have none yet. Older Government of India releases are hard to find at their original addresses, and we only list items we could open and check. We are still adding to these lists. Where a page shows no date, the date comes from the release address or the publisher’s own index.

Photo list

The Primary Health Centre complex at Amragori, Howrah
File photo: the Primary Health Centre complex at Amragori, Howrah district. Photo: Biswarup Ganguly via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.
Foundation stone of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi
File photo: the foundation stone of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. Photo: Hellfire20 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Related on ROR Labs

How this page is built. Figures come from the official statistical releases linked above; where agencies publish provisional numbers we say so, because they are revised. Many Indian statistics are compiled state by state and published a year or two late (NCRB’s accident report for 2024 came out in 2026), so we say which year each figure covers. Large numbers are written in international form, with lakh (100,000) and crore (10 million) in brackets where Indian sources use them. Photos are public-domain or Creative Commons images credited in each caption; file photos are illustrative and are not from the events described unless the caption says so. This page tracks trends and is not personal safety, medical, legal or financial advice.