I read this and am amazed at the hypocrasy. Aren't WHO and the UN among others bitching about overpopulation? And yet they want 400 million to change their lifestyles so that they may live longer.... Does this make sense?
I mean we all are going to die, and yes, death isn't always painless and sudden, it sometimes lingers and is painful, but we ALL will die.
So if we all change to healthier lifestyles, we'll all live longer? What exactly does that mean since the world is getting older anyway? There will be more elderly to take care of, i.e. retirement funds to pay into, more medicaid and medicare expenses, more elderly poverty..... and so on.
I'm not trying to be pessimistic just realistic..... the Bible states 3 score and 10 (70 years) and any more is borrowed time (or so my 94 yr. old 7Th Day Adventist grandma says).
And so we all have healthier lifestyles and live longer..... well then we have overpopulation, pollution, poverty and people dying from cancers (becauuse of pollutants), disease and starvation the overpopulation has caused......
This just amazes me, the hypocrasy of wanting people to live longer but telling us we're headed for overpopulation.
Quote:
WHO: Chronic Disease May Kill 400M by 2015 By UTA HARNISCHFEGER, Associated Press Writer
35 minutes ago
Heart disease, diabetes and other chronic ailments will kill nearly 400 million people over the next 10 years, but many of those deaths can be prevented by healthier lifestyles and inexpensive medication, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
The financial burden from an increasing death toll from such non-communicable diseases will also be enormous, costing countries such as China and India billions of dollars, WHO said in a report.
"The lives of far too many people in the world are being blighted and cut short by chronic diseases," said Lee Jong-Woo, WHO director-general.
He was citing the latest WHO report to draw attention to the increasing threat from diseases that can be prevented in part by healthier diets and giving up smoking.
Until recent years, these chronic conditions were overshadowed by infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, though they cause far more deaths. Chronic, or noncommunicable diseases, account for three out of five deaths worldwide, the WHO says.
The 128-page WHO report estimated that 39 million deaths from chronic diseases in the next 10 years can be prevented through healthier lifestyles and relatively cheap medication, including 28 million in developing countries.
The projections were based on surveys conducted in countries that have already implemented measures to encourage healthier habits. Exercise and better diets can help prevent 80 percent of premature cases of heart disease, strokes and diabetes, the report said.
Although other studies have predicted the number of deaths from individual diseases, the WHO report was the first to project the toll from all major chronic conditions.
It was also the first to quantify the economic burden of treating such conditions in individual countries. China could spend $558 billion treating heart disease, strokes and diabetes over the next decade, the study said. Russia could spend $303 billion and India $236 billion.
"This is a preventable epidemic," said Robert Beaglehole, co-author of the study. "We know what to do, we know how to do it, preventions are very cheap."
The study urged developing countries to adopt prevention policies that have helped cut death rates in industrialized countries. Heart disease-related deaths have fallen up to 70 percent in Canada, Australia, England and the United States in the last three decades, the report said.
It also cited Poland, which reduced deaths among young adults by 10 percent in the 1990s, in part by making fruit and vegetables more available and removing subsidies on dairy products like butter.
"There is no question that low-income countries can follow the example of industrialized countries," Beaglehole said. "Most of their success stems from population-wide campaigns. For example, to reduce the intake of saturated fats, sugar and salt and to encourage activity."
The reported also pointed to cheaper treatments. Medication to prevent complications from heart disease, for example, is no longer subject to patent restrictions and is cheaper to make.
Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions or Comments
|
LINK:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051005/...E0BHNlYwN0bWE-