Table 3.

Prevalence of traditional risk factors for cardiovascular diseases in South Asian countries [7, 12]

Risk factor	Pakistan	India	Sri Lanka	Bangladesh	Nepal
Diabetes mellitus (prevalence 20–79 y age), 2019*	8.8%	10.4%	7.9%	9.2%	7.2%
Physical inactivity (prevalence % 18 y above) (range)**	33.7 [20.3–47.0]	34.0 [22.3–47.7]	28.9 [21.3–37.9]	27.8 [16.4–39.1]	13.4 [11.2–15.6]
Raised total cholesterol ≥ 5 mmol/L (range)**	37.3 [21.3–55.0]	27.9 [20.8–35.8]	35.8 [20.4–53.5]	25.7 [13.4–41.9]	23.2 [11.8–38.1]
Obesity (BMI ≥ 30, age standardized estimate in %) (range)**	8.6 [6.3–11.3]	3.9 [3.0–5.0]	5.2 [3.6–7.4]	3.6 [2.4–5.1]	4.1 [2.8–5.7]
Smoking (range)**	15.7 [8.6–23.3]	20.9 [14.1–28.8]	15 [7.7–23.1]	34.2 [25.6–43.1]	25.8 [17.5–33.5]

^*TW Bank. Diabetes Prevalence (2019)

^**WH Organization. Global Health Observatory data repository