From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Ruggiero, Mrs. Ana Lucia (WDC)</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ruglucia@paho.org">ruglucia@paho.org</a>></span><br><div class="gmail_quote">crossposted from : <a href="mailto:EQUIDAD@listserv.paho.org">EQUIDAD@listserv.paho.org</a><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial" size="1"><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial">From IHME - William Heisel, <u></u><u></u>London<u></u><u></u><b><font color="maroon"><span style="color:maroon;font-weight:bold"><u></u><u></u></span></font></b></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><b><font color="maroon" face="Arial" size="3"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:maroon;font-weight:bold">Massive
shifts reshape the health landscape worldwide<u></u><u></u></span></font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><i><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;font-style:italic">Fewer people dying but more live
with disability. <br>
Mental health disorders, pain, and injuries hindering people’s health.
Obesity and high blood sugar replacing lack of food as leading risks. <u></u><u></u></span></font></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font color="black" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">Data visualizations
website: <a href="http://bit.ly/TfvD4u" target="_blank"><font color="black"><span style>http://bit.ly/TfvD4u</span></font></a> <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font color="black" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">GHDx - Global Health
Data Exchange website: <a href="http://bit.ly/TYSuDQ" target="_blank"><font color="black"><span style>http://bit.ly/TYSuDQ</span></font></a> <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><u></u><u></u><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">LONDON</span></font><u></u><u></u><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">, December
2012 – Globally, health advances present most people with a devastating
irony: avoid premature death but live longer and sicker.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">That’s one of the main findings from the Global Burden
of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010), a collaborative project led by the <br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
(IHME) at the <u></u><u></u>University<u></u>
of <u></u>Washington<u></u><u></u>. <u></u><u></u></span></b></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">The findings are being announced at the Royal Society in <u></u><u></u>London<u></u><u></u> on Dec. 14 and
published in <b><font color="black"><span style="font-weight:bold"><a href="http://bit.ly/Zi2omM" target="_blank"><font color="black"><span style>The
Lancet</span></font></a>,</span></font></b> the first time the journal has
dedicated an entire triple issue to one study. The seven scientific papers and
accompanying commentaries provide a new platform for assessing the
world’s biggest health challenges, and then finding the best ways to
address them.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">The study reveals massive shifts in health trends around the
world since 1990, the starting point of the first Global Burden of Disease
study. Since that time, the world has grown considerably older. Where
infectious disease and childhood illnesses related to malnutrition were once
the primary causes of death, now children in many parts of the world –
outside of sub-Saharan Africa – are more likely to live into an unhealthy
adulthood and suffer from eating too much food rather than too little. Lastly,
health burden is increasingly defined by what’s making us sick rather
than what’s killing us. <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">The biggest contributor to the world’s health burden
used to be premature mortality – driven by more than 10 million deaths in
children under the age of 5 – but now the disease burden is caused mostly
by chronic diseases and injuries such as musculoskeletal disorders, mental
health conditions, and injuries. This burden intensifies as people live longer.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">Essentially, what ails you isn’t necessarily what
kills you. While the world has done a tremendous job battling fatal illnesses
– especially from infectious diseases – we are now living with more
health problems that cause a lot of pain, impair our mobility, and prevent us
from seeing, hearing, and thinking clearly.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"></span></font><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"><br></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><i><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;font-style:italic">Findings show
rapid changes in health outcomes<br>
</span></font></i><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">The study underscores significant
achievements, such as the dramatic drop in child mortality, which has fallen so
quickly that it has beaten every published prediction. But more work remains.
Diseases such as diarrhea due to rotavirus and measles continue to kill more
than 1 million children under the age of 5 every year, despite effective
vaccines against those diseases.<br>
<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">While child mortality has decreased,
GBD 2010 found a startling 44% increase in the number of deaths among adults
aged 15 to 49 between 1970 and 2010. This is in part because of increases in
violence and the ongoing challenge of HIV/AIDS, which kills 1.5 million people
annually.<br>
<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">Another mixed success is that while
the burden of malnutrition has successfully been cut by two-thirds, poor diets
and physical inactivity are contributing to rising rates of obesity and other
lifestyle-related risk factors, including high blood pressure, tobacco smoking,
and harmful alcohol use. Dietary risk factors and physical inactivity
collectively caused 10% of the disease burden, and the burden due to excess
weight and high blood sugar are rising substantially.<br>
<u></u><u></u></span></font></p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">Disability is causing a greater and
greater fraction of the burden of disease as demographics and epidemiology
evolve. Much of this burden is caused by a relatively small group of ailments.
Researchers examined more than 300 diseases, injuries, and risk factors and
found that just 50 distinct causes account for 78% of the global burden. Just
18 of those account for more than half the burden.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"><br>
The types of illnesses and injuries causing death and disability are also
changing. While ischemic heart disease and stroke remained the two greatest
causes of death between 1990 and 2010, all the other rankings in the top 10
causes changed. Diseases such as diabetes, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive
pulmonary disease moved up, and diarrhea, lower respiratory infections, and
tuberculosis moved down.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"><font>Falling</font> out of the 10 leading causes
between 1990 and 2010 <font>were</font> protein-energy malnutrition, the leading cause of
starvation. They were replaced by lower back pain and road injuries.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><i><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;font-style:italic">Gap between
sub-Saharan <u></u>Africa<u></u> and the rest of the world
widens<u></u><u></u></span></font></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">The trends identified in GBD 2010 occur across regions with
one notable exception: sub-Saharan <u></u>Africa<u></u>,
where infectious diseases, childhood illnesses, and maternal causes of death
account for as much as 70% of the burden of disease. By comparison, these
conditions account for only one-third of the burden in South Asia and <u></u>Oceania<u></u>, and less than 20% in all other regions.
Additionally, while the average age of death throughout Latin America, Asia,
and North Africa increased by more than 25 years between 1970 and 2010, it rose
by less than 10 years in most of sub-Saharan <u></u>Africa<u></u>.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">The data do show modest progress
in lowering child mortality, but communicable and nutritional causes still
account for half of premature deaths in Africa.
Nearly as troubling is the rising burden of chronic illness, such as stroke and
heart disease<font>.</font> </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> What have been historically
considered “Western ailments” also menace millions in <u></u>Africa<u></u>, including the very young. Pain, anxiety, and depression
– which erode quality of life and productivity – are ranked among
the highest causes of years lived with disability throughout sub-Saharan <u></u>Africa<u></u>.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">“African nations have not even
begun to confront the consequences of exploding cases of mental illness,
depression, pain, and the enormous burden of substance abuse that stem from
those conditions,” <br>
<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><i><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;font-style:italic">New evidence
creates a platform for research and strategic policymaking<br>
<u></u><u></u></span></font></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">GBD 2010 provides the evidence for a
range of new research projects and targeted policy making. It also opens the
opportunity for countries to conduct detailed burden studies of their own
populations.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> <u></u><u></u></span></font></p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></font> <font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">The findings from the first GBD
study also brought malaria back to the world stage after years of neglect,
spurring the rise in policy attention that has lowered deaths. Depression had
not been framed as a public health problem until the 1990s when the original
GBD study showed its significant burden. <br></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> <br></span></font></p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"></span></font><br>
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