This World Health Day, let’s talk about Critical Illness in India APRIL 7, 2018

To all the readers and the team, wish you a World Health Day. As it is said, the most important asset we have is our body. World Health Day is a reminder for us to give our physical and mental well-being some time; we should think about what we do and how we live. The balance of work and life also plays a role in our health. Today, let’s promise to ourselves we will take care of ourselves better.

We Indians are a hard-working lot. We soldier through our rigorous school and university standards followed by challenging grind of office work. In this entire bustle, we forget to focus on the most important aspect of our lives: our health. It is easy to neglect our health due to our busy lives, and this has led to an alarming increase in lifestyle diseases.

Diseases that we used to face in our late 50’s are now a grave reality cropping up during our 30’s and 40’s. These are often the herald of many other deadly diseases. These include cardiovascular diseases, stroke, lung and kidney diseases, etc. It is estimated that a whopping 13.7% of Indians die due to heart diseases, and almost 11.9% due to lung diseases. Diseases such as strokes have a mortality rate of 9.94% while cancer kills almost 1% of our population; these include oral, breast, cervical and brain cancer. Genetics also makes us prone to many other diseases, too.

Diseases which are life-threatening and those that require intense medical treatment come under the category of critical illness. The occurrence of such illness will place a lot of burden on your loved ones from paying costly medical bills to your constant care. Since surgeries for heart ailments can go up to Rs. 4 Lakhs, liver transplants amount up to Rs. 18 Lakhs, these also affects your finances and future earning potential. Surgical procedures and the recovery period of critical illness take very long; this is a scary reality for families with single earning member. Thus, it is important that you start planning for this contingency by choosing to cover yourself through insurance when younger (when the premium will be less expensive). It will also maintain a continued cover over a period. These policies will give your family the peace of mind and will reduce the stress during stressful periods.

To have a broader view, it is important to consider adding a critical illness rider to your existing life insurance or health insurance policy. But the drawback would be that such schemes will exhaust the life insurance scheme fully when used up during critical conditions.

Hence it will be more apt to consider taking up a scheme that works separately from health insurance. Edelweiss Tokio’s – CritiCare+ is one such plan. CritiCare+ provides a lump sum payment on the diagnosis of 36 illnesses without the requirement of proof of hospitalization. It also has a single-claim and multi-claim option, through which the lump sum payment can be claimed up to three times. This will provide a way to ease your suffering the struggle of hospitalization and other medical procedures. Moreover, the funds received are completely tax-free. Edelweiss Tokio endeavours to give you peace of mind while also securing the interests of your loved ones.