Chronic disease is defined as being of long duration, generally slow in progression and not passed from person to person. The Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 reported a substantial increase in the years lived with disability from 1990 to 2013. This was overwhelming due to non-communicable diseases, with no infectious diseases in the top 20 leading causes of YLDs globally in 2013.
Chronic condition multi-morbidity is high in developed countries and the prevalence of it increases with age; Australian data indicate that around 40% of people aged over 44 years have chronic disease multi-morbidity, increasing to around 50% for 65–74-year-olds, and 70% for 85 years or over. You can visit this site to find more about chronic disease management and its cure.
Addressing chronic disease is a major challenge for healthcare systems around the world, which have largely developed to deal with acute episodic care, rather than to provide organized care for people with long-term conditions. A characteristic of chronic diseases is that they often require a long period of supervision, observation or care.
The defining features of primary care (including continuity, coordination, and comprehensiveness) makes this set suitable for managing chronic conditions. Evidence increasingly highlights the importance of reorienting health policy and healthcare towards chronic care systems, including primary care that is proactive rather than reactive. Countries with strong primary care systems tend to have better health outcomes at a lower cost.