Future health - 9 Jun 2008
By Bridget Farham
Opening a newspaper in the mornings these days is a pretty depressing business. Rising fuel prices are stimulating higher prices generally and the use of agriculural land for biofuels is contributing to hunger around the world, as more and more people can simply no longer afford to put food on the table. Changing climates cause famine, floods and changes in the distribution of diseases as a result of rising temperatures and changing vegetation types. In the west, people continue to get fatter and fatter with the subsequent cost in lifestyle diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. In the developing world (god forbid that it should develop along western lines!) people are either malnourished, or, paradoxically as a result of poverty, also obese. Cigarette companies also target the developing world, and this, along with other factors, results in an increase in diseases of lifestyle in parallel with the diseases of poverty and malnutrition.
A recent World Health Organisation report predicts that in the next three decades infectious diseases will decrease around the world, but that chronic diseases of lifestyle, cancers and road traffic accidents will take an increasing toll on global populations. Perhaps the rising price of petrol will stop the increase in road traffic accidents, but there is no sign of any environmental factor that will prevent the rise of the other forms of ill health. A report today says that more than 90% of cancers are caused by environmental factors - and that this will increase in the coming decades.
In an era of unprecedented technological medical intervention it would seem that we are getting sicker and sicker. Simple prevention measures have been lost along the wayside somewhere. We need to get back to growing sufficient food to feed each community, in sufficient quantities that no-one does without or has too much, to a situation where cigarettes are unknown and alcohol is reserved for special ocassions and we walk to most places instead of driving. Perhaps that might just get us to a healthy future.
