Chronic medical conditions set to explode in coming years

There's a rather extraordinary chart in today's paper showing the expected growth of chronic medical conditions in Ontario over the next 20 years.

So, everything is going up. But over twenty years, with the population expected to continue increasing dramatically and the average age of the population also continuing its upward trend, maybe you would expect everything to go up. What's extraordinary is the AMOUNT certain conditions are expected to increase by. 

According to forecasts, Ontario's population is expected to increase by about 39% over the next 23 years, which gives us a pretty good benchmarks against which to compare other forecasts. According to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health report, though, Renal Failure is expected to increase by an astounding 361.5%, Hearing Loss by 224.1%, Osteoporosis by 123.5%, Cancer by 120.6%, Dementia by 119.4%, Diabetes by 119.7%, etc, etc. 

These are huge increases which will put our already ailing healthcare system into a cardiac arrest of its own. These figures are just for Ontario, but you can expect the rest of the country to go along the same lines. 

And what's with the Renal Failure stat? What are we doing to our kidneys that will lead to such an explosion of failures in the next twenty years? Well, Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is apparently largely caused by other chronic contitions, like diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, all of which are also on the increase. But 361.5%? Yow!