PHM-Exch> NCDs: Public health policy at the mercy of corporate greed

[Claudio Schuftan]

 Boyd Swinburn

September 7, 2011 - 6:33AM

The world is getting rounder..... and suffering more from non communicable
diseases such as diabetes and cancer

Later this month the *UN General Assembly <http://www.un.org/en/ga/>* will
hold a high level meeting on global action on non-communicable diseases such
as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, which are responsible for
two-thirds of deaths worldwide.

They will release an agreed declaration that is meant to pave the way to
reducing the number of premature deaths from non-communicable diseases – or
NCDs - the vast majority of which take place in poorer countries.

Yet, despite this enormous burden, rich countries, including Australia, are
joining forces with tobacco, food, alcohol and pharmaceutical corporations
to water down commitments that might flow from this meeting.

In the past nine months, governments, private industry groups,
non-government organisations and international bodies like the World Health
Organization (WHO) have held hundreds of meetings round the globe, jostling
to shape the final document to emerge from the UN meeting.

In the early stages, WHO and public interest groups hoped that
*agreements<http://www.who.int/nmh/events/moscow_ncds_2011/conference_documents/moscow_declaration_en.pdf>
* on targets and commitments would provide the boost to mobilisation on NCDs
that a similar UN meeting achieved for HIV/AIDS a decade ago.  This turned
out to be a rather naive and optimistic hope. Since the proposed policies
include smoke-free environments, restrictions on food marketing to children,
increased alcohol tax and the promotion of generic medicines those
multinational businesses see them as a threat to the sales of their
products, and, as experience has shown, they do not take that threat
lightly.

In Europe the food industry spent €1 billion opposing proposals for
front-of-pack ''traffic light'' labels on their products.

The rich countries, particularly the US and European Union but also
Australia, Canada and New Zealand, are active accomplices in watering down
the draft UN statements.

A statement with commitments to tangible outcomes has long been tossed aside
and been replaced with a much weaker political statement with all targets
and accountability mechanisms removed.

The whole negotiation process has ground to a halt with the G77 group of low
and middle-income countries in one corner in a stand-off with the rich
countries and multinational companies in the other corner.

*Boyd Swinburn is the Alfred Deakin Professor and director, WHO
Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University.*


Read more:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/public-health-policy-at-the-mercy-of-corporate-greed-20110906-1jv50.html#ixzz1XGUQQpdt
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20110907/ae83bb31/attachment.html>