World leaders will agree a deal at a meeting of the United Nations on September 19, today, to try to curb the spread of preventable “lifestyle” diseases, amid concern that progress is already being hampered by powerful lobbyists from the food, alcohol and tobacco industries.
Cancers, heart disease, diabetes and lung conditions already cost rich countries dear in terms of the health bills and productive life spans of their citizens. But the scourge of what the World Health Organisation (WHO) calls the non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is rapidly spreading across all parts of the globe, fuelled by obesity as a result of bad diet and sedentary lifestyles, together with alcohol and smoking. These diseases were responsible for around 36m of the 57m global deaths in 2008, including about nine million before the age of 60 — and many are preventable.
While countries such as the U.K. have imposed smoking bans, taxed cigarettes and alcohol heavily and restricted junk food advertising to children, most developing countries have yet to address these issues — and the food and tobacco industries are accused of adopting marketing and production strategies there that would be unacceptable in Europe or North America.
Second such meet
The scale and disastrous potential of these diseases has led the U.N. to call only its second high-level summit on a health issue — the first was on Aids in 2001. Months of negotiation have led to a draft declaration that will be signed at Monday's summit. But while experts commend its tough depiction of the problem and its calls for all governments to take action, there is widespread concern that an absence of targets — the WHO proposed cutting preventable deaths by 25 per cent by 2025 — will reduce its impact.
Salt intake
Ann Keeling, chair of the NCD Alliance, a global federation of disease-fighting organisations, has similar feelings. “It's incredible that we have got this far — that we have got to the U.N. at all.What we're not happy with is that, having recognised the problem and talked about the need for more resources, it doesn't agree any time-bound commitments, or very few.” Among the targets that failed to make it was a limit on salt consumption. Although much of the developed world has maximum daily recommended levels, a proposal by Norway to ask member states to bring down daily salt intake to 5g per person was blocked by the EU, Australia, Japan, the U.S. and Canada.
Experts such as Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at St George's Hospital in London and chairman of the campaigning group World Action on Salt and Health, think government negotiators were swayed by their own trade interests. “The EU is very much in the hands of the food industry, in our view,” he said. ( Sarah Boseley is health editor of the Guardian.)
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011
