Prospects and Challenges of Precision Medicine in Lower- and Middle-Income Countries: A Brief Overview

The trend of NCDs in most LMIC countries is slowly but gradually follows that of in the developed countries. There are four significant diseases reported by WHO, which are equally common, such as CVDs, diabetes, cancer, and chronic respiratory disease that causes widespread early death & morbidity. Indeed, it incurs an overwhelming financial burden to most countries in the world. The rise of drug-resistant microbes is another major problem. To overcome this issue, precision medicine (PM) comes into play whereby individual variability in genes, environment, lifestyle, and nutrition of each person is considered for disease treatment & prevention. PM provides a personalized approach, the right treatment to the right people at the right time. Many wealthy countries in the West…