Concerted efforts to combat major health risks could increase the healthy life expectancy of many people by more than a decade, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.
In World Health Report 2002: Reducing Risks, Promoting Healthy Life (www .who .int /whr/2002/en/), WHO identifies some of the main global risks affecting today's disease, disability and death rates. The top 10 risks account for 40% of global deaths, while the next 10 are responsible for less than 10%.
The major risks vary from being underweight and having unsafe sex (most parts of Africa) to tobacco use and hypertension (North America and other developed regions). “Globally, we need to achieve a much better balance between preventing disease and merely treating its consequences,” says report director Dr. Christopher Murray. “This can only come about with concerted action to identify and reduce major risks to health.”
WHO has also developed a system for identifying and reporting cost- effective health interventions for different regions. “Since many of these risks are continuous, without a threshold, the most cost-effective interventions are often those that move the entire population to a lower risk zone,” says Dr. Anthony Rodgers, a WHO consultant. “A good example would be government- and industry-led reductions of salt in processed foods.”
Unless action is taken, WHO predicts that by 2020 there will be 9 million tobacco-related deaths annually, compared with almost 5 million today; obesity will kill another 5 million people annually, compared with 3 million now.
WHO says that if all prevention issues are addressed, healthy life spans could increase by as much as 16 or more years in parts of Africa and by 5 years in developed countries such as Canada. — Barbara Sibbald, CMAJ
Figure. Photo by: World Health Organization