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Diplomacy and International Institutions

More on Noncommunicable Diseases

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A nine-year-old girl has her blood pressure checked as she takes part in a research project on childhood obesity at a hospital in Hong Kong. Obesity, a disease linked with increased risks of asthma, heart diseases, diabetes, high blood pressure and certain cancers, has become one of the biggest health threats facing many industrialised countries. Around 13 percent of Hong Kong children are classified as obese and doctors say it has been on the up since the early 1990s.
A nine-year-old girl has her blood pressure checked at a hospital in Hong Kong. (Bobby Yip/courtesy Reuters)

Last week I noted that the UN is holding its first ever High Level Meeting on Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) starting today. The Wall Street Journal has a nice piece in today’s edition previewing the summit. It estimates that:

If chronic diseases continue to proliferate with no major campaigns or medical advances to stem them and the population continues to age and grow, the cumulative loss of output to the global economy could be $30 trillion by 2030, according to an analysis released Sunday by the World Economic Forum and the Harvard School of Public Health. If mental health costs were folded in, the overall loss to global output would total $46.7 trillion by 2030, the researchers projected.

That’s a pretty steep economic price to pay; hence, the desire to do something about NCDs.