Keep away from the "sick six"

Turns out, if we can reduce or curb six health risk factors from life, we can prevent more than 37 million premature deaths from chronic diseases over 15 years globally

What study?

Using country-level data, the researchers estimated the number of deaths that could be prevented between 2010 and 2025 by reducing the burden of each of the six risk factors to globally-agreed target levels. This is the first study to analyse the impact that reducing globally targeted risk factors will have on the UN’s ‘25x25’ target to reduce premature deaths from NCDs by 25 percent by 2025.

What are the 6 factors?

* Tobacco use (30 per cent reduction and a more ambitious 50 per cent reduction)

* Alcohol use (10 per cent reduction)

* Salt intake (30 per cent reduction)

* High blood pressure (25 per cent reduction)

* Halting the rise in the prevalence of obesity

* Halting the rise in the prevalence of diabetes.

What does this mean?

This means that achieving these health targets can significantly reduce or curb deaths from four main non-communicable diseases (NCDs) — cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory disease, cancers and diabetes. The worrying part is that “not reaching these targets would result in 38.8 million deaths in 2025 from the four main NCDs — 10.5 million deaths more than the 28.3 million who died in 2010”.