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‘Lifestyle diseases’ kill 16 million a year: WHO

Diseases linked to lifestyle choices, including diabetes and some cancers, kill 16 million people prematurely each year, the World Health Organization said on Monday, urging action to stop the "slow-moving public health disaster".

'Lifestyle diseases' kill 16 million a year: WHO
Obesity is among the health concerns raised by "lifestyle diseases". Photo: AFP/File

Unhealthy habits like smoking, alcohol abuse and consuming too much fat, salt and sugar have sparked an epidemic of diseases which together constitute the leading cause of death globally, WHO said.
   
This "lifestyle disease" epidemic "causes a much greater public health threat than any other epidemic known to man," said Shanthi Mendis, the lead author of WHO's Chronic Diseases Prevention and Management report.
   
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), like cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, lung disease and a range of cancers, killed a full 38 million people around the globe in 2012 — 16 million of them under the age of 70.
   
"Not thousands are dying, but millions are dying . . . every year in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, not in their 80s and 90s," said Mendis.
   
"It's beyond belief that it is seemingly invisible," she told reporters ahead of the launch.
   
Most of the world's 16 million premature NCD deaths each year — 82 percent — occur in poor and middle income countries, and most of them could be averted with just small investments, the report found.
   
"The global community has the chance to change the course of the NCD epidemic," WHO chief Margaret Chan said in a statement.
   
Millions of lives could be saved if the world over the next decade invests just $11.2 billion each year, or $1-3 per person, on promoting healthier habits, the report found.

Devastating consequences 

Today, some six million people die prematurely each year due to tobacco use, 3.3 million deaths are linked to alcohol abuse, 3.2 million to lacking physical activity and 1.7 million to eating too much salt, according to WHO findings.
   
A full 42 million children under the age of five are considered to be obese, and an estimated 84 percent of adolescents do not get enough exercise, Mendis said, describing the situations as "extremely frightening."
   
The international community has staked out nine global targets for shifting unhealthy habits with the aim of slashing premature NCD deaths by a quarter between 2011 and 2025.
   
Simple and inexpensive steps like banning advertising of tobacco and alcohol products and taxing foods and drinks that contain high levels of salt and caffeine has already proven successful in a range of countries, WHO said.
   
In Turkey, for instance, an advertising ban on tobacco products combined with significant price hikes and health warnings has pushed smoking rates down 13.4-percent since 2008.
   
A move in Hungary to heavily tax unhealthy food and drink components has meanwhile led to a 27-percent drop in junk food sales, the report said.
   
But while some countries have made progress, most will fall short of the 2025 target, WHO said, warning that inaction would have far-reaching consequences.
   
"When people fall sick and die in the prime of their lives, productivity suffers, and the cost of treating diseases can be devastating," the UN health agency said.
   
It has estimated that if nothing is done to improve the situation, premature NCD deaths will suck $7 trillion out of the global economy over the next decade.

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ANGELA MERKEL

WHO to set up pandemic data hub in Berlin

The World Health Organization announced Wednesday it would set up a global data hub in Berlin to analyse information on emerging pandemic threats, filling the gaps exposed by Covid-19.

WHO to set up pandemic data hub in Berlin
Angela Merkel on May 5th. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/AFP Pool | John Macdougall

The WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, which will start operating later this year, is set to analyse data quickly and in detail, in order to predict, prevent, detect, prepare for and respond to risks worldwide.

The hub will try to get ahead of the game, looking for pre-signals that go far beyond current systems that monitor publicly available information for signs of emerging outbreaks.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed gaps in the global systems for pandemic and epidemic intelligence,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists.

“There will be more viruses that will emerge with the potential for sparking epidemics or pandemics.

“Viruses move fast. But data can move even faster. With the right information, countries and communities can stay one step ahead of an emerging risk and save lives.”

READ ALSO: ‘We are still in the third wave’: German Health Minister urges caution in reopening after shutdown

Merging digital, health expertise

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin was a good location for the hub as it already had leading players in the digital and health fields, such as the Robert Koch Institute.

“If that expertise is now supplemented by the WHO Hub, we will create a unique environment for pandemic and health research here in Berlin – an environment from which important action-oriented insights will emerge for governments and leaders around the world,” she said in a video message.

It is hoped that the site will be operational from September. Its budget is still under discussion, while Germany will meet the start-up costs.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said the world needed the capacity to detect outbreaks with the potential to become health crises “before the threat becomes a sad reality”.

Global systems were currently “insufficiently prepared” to handle the risks posed by outbreaks, mutations of existing pathogens, extensions of diseases to previously unaffected populations, and diseases jumping species from animals to humans, he added.

“There’s a clear need for a stronger global early warning alert and emergency response system with improved public health intelligence,” he said.

“Better data and better analytics are key for better decisions.”

 Looking for pre-signals

“There are signals that may occur before epidemics happen… data that can give us pre-signals,” said WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan. That information could drive early decision-making, he added.

“The Hub will allow us to develop tools for that sort of predictive analytics,” he said.

A joint mission by international and Chinese scientists concluded in March that the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes Covid-19 disease most likely passed to humans from a bat via an intermediary animal.

The experts’ report suggested the outbreak could have started as far back as September 2019, long before it was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan.

The WHO only became aware of the new coronavirus on December 31st that year, when its epidemic intelligence service and its China office spotted a media report and a mention by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission of a mysterious cluster of pneumonia cases.

The Covid-19 pandemic has killed at least 3.2 million people and more than 154 million cases have been registered worldwide since then, according to tallies from official sources compiled by AFP.

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