Before India turns 100: 10 doctors reveal the health crisis we must solve by 2047

What is the one health crisis in your field that India must solve before then? Instead, they reveal a larger picture of India's health future, from mental illness and cancer to diabetes, heart disease, respiratory illness, ageing, women's health, childhood health and preventable infections.

What makes their responses striking is the overlap. Several doctors spoke about diseases that begin silently, remain undiagnosed for years and eventually reach hospitals only after complications have developed.

What Happened

Others pointed to something even more fundamental: India cannot build a healthier future by treating people only after they fall sick. Prevention, early detection, primary healthcare and healthier environments will have to become part of everyday life.

• Dr Ananya Mohanty, Consultant, Internal Medicine, Manipal Hospital, Bhubaneswar, believes one of India's biggest health challenges by 2047 will be the growing burden of non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

• He points to the ICMR INDIAB national study, which found that 35.5% of Indian adults have hypertension, roughly 315 million people.

• The study also found diabetes in 11.4%, prediabetes in 15.3% and abdominal obesity in nearly 40%.

Key Details

Director of the Department of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences at Fortis Healthcare, Dr Samir Parikh, says mental health is the epidemic that we are not willing to see or willing to accept that it is the single biggest problem. My take.

• More than 80% were reported to have some form of lipid abnormality.

• For Dr Garvit Chitkara, Associate Director, Breast Surgical Oncology and Oncoplasty, Nanavati Max Institute of Cancer Care, Mumbai, India's biggest cancer crisis before 2047 is not simply that more people are developing cancer.

• It is that too many cancers are still being detected late.

Why It Matters

It is an epidemic that we are not willing to see or accept and this is the single biggest problem. We asked Dr Chandrakant Lahariya, a practising specialist in 'Preventive and Cardiometabolic Medicine' and a leading health policy expert, about his wishlist.

• Many remain unaware that they have high blood pressure or other cardiovascular risk factors, allowing damage to build silently over years.

• The bigger concern, according to Dr Narang, is what happens after people develop these conditions.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by India Today as more details emerge