Subscribe to the RSS feed.World Health Organization: Five preventable factors cause 25% of premature deaths
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CHP | Posted on: October 29th, 2009
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The World Health Organization (WHO) announced in a report released on October 27, 2009 that 25% of all premature deaths in the world are caused by five preventable factors:
- Poor childhood nutrition
- Unsafe sex
- Alcohol abuse
- Bad sanitation and hygiene
- High blood pressure
“Understanding the relative importance of health risk factors helps governments to figure out which health policies they want to pursue,” said Colin Mathers, WHO’s Coordinator for Mortality and Burden of Disease.
Other findings:
- Overweight and obesity causes more deaths worldwide than underweight;
- Unhealthy and unsafe environments cause one in four child deaths worldwide;
- Tobacco smoking now causes 71% of lung cancer deaths worldwide.
- In low-income countries, easily remedied nutritional deficiencies prevent one in 38 newborns from reaching the age of five;
- Ten leading preventable risks decrease life expectancy by more than 10 years for the entire continent of Africa.
The report also said that while not having enough nutritious food is a big health risk for those in poorer countries, obesity and overweight now cause more deaths worldwide than being underweight.
The WHO warned that developing countries now increasingly face a double burden of risks to health: burdens traditionally associated with poverty, such as under-nutrition, unsafe water and sanitation, with additional rapidly encroaching risk factors of high blood pressure, cholesterol, obesity, and general lack of physical activity, resulting in large part from an increased globalized, and “westernized,” society.
In terms of population health, it looks as if the international community is not necessarily receiving the best benefits of a newer, modernized, globalized society.
The complete report can be found here.
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The WHO report brings to light a major challenge that needs to be more specifically called out in these findings - the burden that Africa shoulders under its sustained HIV/AIDS epidemic. The free fall from infection to death is deeply rooted in much of what the WHO report calls out - poor nutrition, alcohol abuse, and sanitation. It’s a struggle to overcome the cultural barriers that push women to the margins while fostering a social structure that forces many into situations of sexual violence or abuse, and objectification in order to sustain their own nutrition. Many more are already at risk of being born to an infected mother. Even those are do benefit from AVRs that can prevent mother-to-child transmission still have no way of ensuring that their children are protected from the same cycle as they mature into adulthood.