The Lancet in October 2005 issued a call for global dialogue about chronic disease and death in low and medium income countries. The article states that from an estimated total of 58 million deaths world wide, 35 million people die from heart disease, stroke, cancer and other chronic diseases. 20% of these deaths occur in high-income countries and 80% of these diseases occur in middle-income and low-income countries. The death rate from these potentially preventable diseases is higher in middle to low income countries than high-income countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that all chronic diseases account for 72% of the total global burden of disease in the population aged 30 years and older. Cardiovascular disease is the leading single cause of death worldwide. The projections suggest that the largest relative increases in chronic disease death rate will be in high-income countries. However, it is clear from the high death rates projected for low-income and upper middle-income countries for 2015 that these countries need urgent interventions to control and prevent chronic diseases.

Third World Network, (TWN), published an article about the impending global calamity of infectious diseases. The new diseases range from AIDS to little known but equally lethal viral infections. In many cases their source is unknown as is the reason for their emergence. More than one fifth of the world's population lives in extreme poverty and are bound by their living conditions to the daily hazard of infectious diseases. Increase in air travel and the growing traffic in trade and tourism mean that disease producing organism, the deadly and the commonplace, can be transported rapidly from one continent to another. Changes in global food trade create new opportunities for infections to flourish. Expanding areas of human habitation put additional millions of people at risk from pathogens previously rare or unknown causes of human disease. The effect of climatic changes may give some diseases the opportunity to spread to new geographical areas.

During the past ten years, outbreaks of old foes such as plague, diphtheria, yellow fever, dengue, meningitis, influenza and cholera have claimed many lives. Today there are other deadly diseases to contend with: HIV/AIDS, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, Marburg virus, a new form of animal influenza in humans, Legionnaires' disease and a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD). Some are believed to have emerged from rainforests and crossed the species barrier to infect humans. Others are amplified from deadly co-infections with diseases such as TB or leishmaniasis and HIV/AIDS. continued >

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