Lifestyle Choices Threaten World Health
posted 11/08/02
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The fate of the world's health -- as well as your own -- may rest in your hands. A major new report from the World Health Organization shows that many of the biggest factors leading to death and disease worldwide could be prevented if people simply made healthier lifestyle choices.
The report shows alcohol, tobacco, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol are the leading causes of disease in both developing and developed countries.
"There is no longer a risk or disease that is the exclusive preserve of the rich countries," says Chris Murray, author of the WHO World Health Report 2002, in a news release.
The authors say unless action is taken by the year 2020, the number of deaths caused by tobacco will climb to 9 million from the 5 million annual deaths now. In addition, they predict that the number of deaths attributable to obesity and overweight will grow to 5 million, up from 3 million deaths per year currently.
The report, which appears in the Oct. 30 issue of The Lancet, ranked the top 26- risk factors that contribute to rates of death and disease worldwide. Overall, researchers found maternal and childhood underweight, unsafe sex, high blood pressure, tobacco, and alcohol use were the leading causes of disease across the globe.
In the poorest regions of the world, childhood and maternal underweight, unsafe sex, unsafe water, sanitation problems, poor hygiene, indoor air pollution, and malnutrition were the major causes of loss of healthy life.
In underdeveloped countries, unsafe sex and childhood and maternal underweight contribute as much to loss of healthy lives as do all the diseases and injuries combined in developed countries.
Together, the top 10 risk factors account for about 40% of the 56 million deaths that occur globally each year. If those risk factors were addressed according to WHO recommendations, the authors say that healthy life spans could increase by more than 16 years in parts of Africa and by about five years in the richest developed countries, such as the U.S., Japan, and Europe.
Experts in the U.S. say the WHO report serves as a warning of the high costs society will face if they fail to act to reduce major risk factors for disease.
"In the United States, we are already facing a crisis in cardiovascular disease, with an obesity and diabetes epidemic, an aging, sedentary population, and widening access-to-care gap. Internationally, these problems are worse -- the access-to-care gap is growing so quickly in certain countries that it will soon be an unbridgeable chasm," says Robert O. Bonow, MD, president of the American Heart Association, in a news release.
In a commentary that accompanies the report, John Powles and Nick Day of the Institute of Public Health in Cambridge, England, say that simply increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables might be an easy way to lower cholesterol-related risk factors highlighted by the report.
But they say, "Public health surveillance on this scale is a new, and immature, science." Although this new report is the more informative and comprehensive than those compiled in the past, they say it should still be regarded as a work in progress.
Source: WebMD.
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