"Our new world citizen nr. 7 billion will probably grow up in an urban setting, and will face factors that increase his or her risk of diabetes, as well as COPD, cancer and heart disease.
"There is also an increasing awareness of the need to help even healthy, young people gain the habits which will predispose them for health in later life. Parents may have a hard time ensuring that their teenagers develops healthy habits, which will follow him or her throughout life, especially if a lack og these habits do not cause ill health immediately," Siri Tellier points out.
"Of course, the good news is that the child is less likely to die from measles, or even AIDS or diarrhoeal diseases. We have reduced the number of child deaths from around 12 million in 1990 to less than 8 million today, and most of the saved lives are through prevention measures such as vaccinations against infectious diseases. That is not only good news, that is fantastic news." Siri Tellier explains.
Flemming Konradsen, Director of the Copenhagen School of Global Health at the University of Copenhagen, shares this optimistic view, and stresses that we must now deal with the non-communicable diseases as seriously as infectious diseases:
"Global disease patterns are changing. As many countries around the world have reduced the great killers such as malaria, we must turn the same effort and resources towards NCD's, as they must be prevented now rather than treated later.
In addition to the personal consequences for the patient, NCDs burden developing health care systems with such high expenses, that can halt their development if we do not intervene," says Professor Flemming Konradsen.
Source: University of Copenhagen