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SYDNEY: World governments focus too much on fighting terrorism while
obesity and other “lifestyle diseases” are killing millions more
people, an international conference heard Monday.
Overcoming deadly factors such as poor diet,
smoking and a lack of exercise should take top priority in the fight
against a growing epidemic of preventable chronic disease, legal and
health experts said.
Global terrorism was a real threat but posed far
less risk than obesity, diabetes and smoking-related illnesses,
prominent US professor of health law Lawrence Gostin said at the
Oxford Health Alliance Summit here.
“Ever since September 11, we’ve been
lurching from one crisis to the next, which has really frightened
the public,” Gostin told Agence France-Presse later.
“While we’ve been focusing so much attention
on that, we’ve had this silent epidemic of obesity that’s
killing millions of people around the world, and we’re devoting
very little attention to it and a negligible amount of money.”
The fifth annual conference of the Oxford Health
Alliance—co-founded by Oxford University—has brought together
world experts from academia, government, business, law, economics
and urban planning to promote change.
About 388 million people will die from chronic
disease worldwide over the next 10 years, according to World Health
Organization figures quoted by the alliance.
“There’s a political paralysis in dealing
with the issue,” said Gostin, an adviser to the US government and
a professor at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities.
He noted that prevention of obesity and its
effects had hardly rated a mention in the current campaign for the
US presidency.
“Yet the human costs are frightening when we
consider that obesity could shorten the average lifespan of an
entire generation, resulting in the first reversal in life
expectancy since data collecting began in 1900,” he said.
Like terrorism, some passing health threats get
major government attention and media coverage, while heart and lung
disease, diabetes and cancer account for 60 percent of the world’s
deaths, the meeting was told.
“It is true that new and re-emerging health
threats such as SARS, avian flu, HIV/AIDS, terrorism, bioterrorism
and climate change are dramatic and emotive,” said Stig Pramming,
the Oxford group’s executive director.
“However, it is preventable chronic disease
that will send health systems and economies to the wall.”
The conference is scheduled to end Wednesday
with a “Sydney Resolution” calling on governments and big
business among others to take action to avert millions of premature
deaths due to chronic disease.
“The way we live now is making us sick, it’s
making our planet sick and it’s not sustainable,” said
Asia-Pacific co-director Ruth Colagiuri.
The Sydney resolution focuses on four key areas,
including the need to make towns and cities healthier places in
which to live by urban design, which promotes walking and cycling
and reduces carbon emissions from motor vehicles.
Insufficient physical exercise is a risk factor
in many chronic diseases and is estimated to cause 1.9 million
deaths worldwide each year, said Tony Capon, professor of health
studies at Australia’s Macquarie University.
“We need to build the physical activity back
into our lives and it’s not simply about bike paths, it’s about
developing an urban habitat that enables people to live healthy
lives: ensuring that people can meet most of their daily needs
within walking and cycling distance of where they live,” he said.
The resolution also calls for a reduction in
sugar, fat and salt content in food, making fresh food affordable
and available and increasing global efforts to stop people smoking.
-- AFP
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