Confronting Asia’s growing rate of chronic conditions means tackling cultural issues as much as medical ones

Asia’s health crisis is often framed as an inevitability: Aging populations, rising medical costs, a surge in lifestyle diseases, elderly patients needing care for longer. Rates of conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes and hypertension are climbing across the region, driven by insufficient exercise, poor diet, drinking, smoking, stress and pollution. These lifestyle diseases now account for roughly 80% of all diagnoses in Asia, a growing burden of morbidity that healthcare systems are struggling to keep pace with.