Effects on world health and the economy
By Melvin J. Howard
Next week, the U.N. General Assembly will hold its first summiton chronic diseases cancer, diabetesand heart and lung disease. Those account for nearly two-thirds of deathsworldwide, or about 36 million. In the United States, they kill nearly 9 out of10 people. They have common risk factors, such as smoking and sedentarylifestyles, and many are preventable. This is only the second time in thehistory of the UN that the General Assembly meets on a health issue (the lastissue was AIDS). The aim is for countries to adopt a concise, action-orientedoutcome document that will shape the global agendas for generations to come.
Non-Communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS and pandemic influenzaattract a lot of attention, but the NCDs are more deadly, accounting for 63percent of all deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization(WHO). The U.N. General Assembly will convene a special session on NCDsSeptember 19–20 of this year in New York with the goal of adopting an action plan for theinternational health community to attack the problem. This session emerges fromthe growing realization that premature deaths from these health problems impedeeconomic development. These diseases can entrench an individual or a family inpoverty because of the inability to work or the cost of medical treatment.Expand those individual difficulties to a broader scale, and they can inhibitnational economic progress. The global cost of NCDs from 2005 to 2030 isestimated at $35 trillion, according to a World Bank study.
Worldwide,stroke and heart-related diseases account for nearly half of all noninfectiousdisease deaths 17 million in 2008 alone, WHO says. Next is cancer (7.6 milliondeaths), followed by respiratory diseases such as emphysema (4.2 million).Diabetes caused 1.3 million deaths in 2008, but that’s misleading — mostdiabetics die of cardiovascular causes. The U.N. chose to focus on those four diseases and theircommon risk factors: tobacco use, alcohol abuse, unhealthy diets, physicalinactivity and environmental carcinogens.
Europe and North America. Too much eating, toolittle exercise and smoking: heart disease and diabetes dominate. Cancers thatare more prevalent with age breast and prostate reflect long life spans inthese regions where treatment is widely available. In Eastern Europe and theformer Soviet Union, lung cancer is the dominant cancer in men. Europe has thehighest smoking prevalence in the world: 29 per cent. Asia. Southeast Asia has the lowest rates of obesity in theworld, even lower than Africa. Yet in China, where only 6 per cent of thepopulation is obese, nearly 4 in 10 people have high blood pressure. China alsohas three times the death rate from respiratory diseases as the United States.Many areas also have high rates of infection with HPV, a sexually spread virusthat can cause cervical cancer. In India, the government has launched anaggressive diabetes and high blood pressure screening project. There are 51million diabetics in India, the second-highest incidence in the world afterChina. Lung cancer is the most common type of cancer in India among men; inwomen, it’s cervical cancer. Central and South America. Cancerprevalence patterns largely resemble North America except that cervical cancerdominates among women in certain areas. Access to care is much poorer in manycountries. Volunteers for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, told ofconditions at a hospital in Honduras, where there are more than 700 new cancercases every year for two oncologists to handle.
