**1. Introduction**

The main aim of the Millennium Development Goal was to remove poverty and improve health. With the end of MDG goals in 2015, a new set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) were proposed to be achieved by the year 2030. The third goal of SDG is to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being at all ages. Reducing the prevalence of non-communicable disease (NCD) is one of the targets of SDG Goal 3. According to Global Burden of Disease Study 2015, DALYs due to communicable disease fell from 1200 million in 1990 to 7416 million in 2015, whereas total DALYs due to non-communicable diseases increased from 1.1 billion to 1.5 billion in 2015. In 2015, communicable accounted for 30.1% of the global DALYs; non-communicable disease accounts for 59.7% and injuries 10.1%. Since 2005, DALYs for the major communicable causes have declined substantially except for a few subsets of infectious diseases [1]. The life expectancy at birth in India has increased from 49.7 years in 1970–1975 to 68.3 years in 2011–2015 [2]. The life expectancy has increased from 23.7 years in 1881 to 66.9 years in 2011–2015 for males and from 25.6 to 70.0 years for females during this period [2, 3]. Further, infant mortality rates reduced from 130 to 37 deaths per 1000 live births from 1970 to 2015 [4, 5]. Child and adult mortality

**Figure 1.**

*Change in morbidity prevalence in India from 2004 to 2014.*

rates have also declined significantly [6, 7], and there has been a significant increase in the probabilities of surviving to age 60 and 70 [8, 9].

With the significant improvement in life expectancy [10], there has been a gradual shift in the age distribution of deaths and disease pattern [11]. The numbers of DALY and DALY rates dropped substantially for communicable disease group between 1990 and 2016. By contrast, numbers of DALYs increased substantially for NCDs. The all-age prevalence of the most leading NCDs increased substantially in India from 1990 to 2016 [12]. Communicable diseases were the major causal agent of mortality in the early 1970s. However, mortality and disease burden are gradually moving towards non-communicable diseases. The premature deaths are shifted to the years lived with disability [13]. The communicable diseases are more concentrated in the people of the lower socio-economic group, and non-communicable diseases are on the rise due to current changes in India's population age structure and improved economic status and lifestyles [13, 14]. In this transition period, studies to understand the relationship between mortality and morbidity has become imperative for giving useful feedback to programme and policy planners who are involved in the public health management.

Studies on mortality and morbidity at the country level have taken central place in the social research domain from several decades (**Figure 1**). Studies addressing the pattern and cause of mortality and morbidity are scarce in India due to paucity of data. This issue has already been studied in the developed countries exhaustively. India is recently going through a phase of both demographic and epidemiological transitions. Health condition has improved along with increasing life expectancy. However, increase in life expectancy is accompanied with the loss of healthy life years. There is a need to examine the recent levels and age pattern of morbidity and its relation to the mortality in the context of India. The main aim of the paper is to see the age pattern of self-reported morbidity by sex in India and to estimate the burden of reported morbidities with a special focus on communicable and noncommunicable diseases and disability by age and sex. This paper aims to provide an overall picture of the disease burden on the context of health and social development and throws light for policy investment and future research.
