Earlier this month, I wrote about the coalition of NGOs who have persuaded the World Health Organisation to pledge to reduce premature deaths from non-communicable diseases by 25% by 2025.
On Saturday at the sixty-fifth World Health Assembly - a meeting of the 194 member countries of the World Health Organisation – ‘delegates approved the development of a global monitoring framework for the prevention and control of NCDs, including indicators and a set of global targets. Member States agreed to adopt a global target of a 25 per cent reduction in premature mortality from non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases by 2025.’
As you can see from the graph above, such a promise is little different to pledging to reduce total mortality by a quarter within thirteen years. To state the obvious, that is not going to happen.
What do these people think we should die of? If you exclude the infectious diseases and the 'non-communicable diseases', there isn't a whole lot left. You'll note that 'dying in a perfect state of health' is not an option. Presumably they want us to either die in an accident or commit suicide.
Or maybe they're planning to reintroduce tuberculosis and pneumonia. As the graph shows, that's the only proven way to keep non-communicables diseases under control.
I will leave the last word to the estimable Dan Gardner...
