Smoking and alcohol use have also overtaken child hunger in the last two decades to become the second and third leading risks globally, according to a study estimating the disease burden attributable to 43 risk factors in 1990 and 2010.
The analysis was undertaken by an international consortium of scientists as part of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010, which is published in The Lancet.
Professor Majid Ezzati of the school of public health at Imperial College London, one of the study’s senior authors, said: “Overall we’re seeing a growing burden of risk factors that lead to chronic diseases in adults, such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and a decreasing burden for risks associated with infectious diseases in children.
“But this global picture disguises the starkly different trends across regions. The risks associated with poverty have come down in most places, like Asia and Latin America, but they remain the leading issues in sub-Saharan Africa.”
The risk factor with the greatest increase in health burden was high body mass index (BMI), which was ranked 10th in 1990 and sixth in 2010. More than three million deaths in 2010 were attributable to excess body weight-more than three times as many as undernutrition. In Australasia and southern Latin America, high BMI ranked as the leading risk factor.
The harms of alcohol also rose sharply, becoming the leading risk factor in Eastern Europe, most of Latin America and southern sub-Saharan Africa and accounting for 4.9 million deaths worldwide in 2010.
Ezzati added: “The good news is there are lots of things we can do to reduce disease risk. To bring down the burden of high blood pressure, we need to regulate the salt content of food, provide easier access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and strengthen primary healthcare services.
“Undernutrition has come down in the ranking because we’ve made a lot of progress in many parts of the world. This should encourage us to continue those efforts and to replicate that success in Africa, where it’s still a major problem.”
Source: Imperial College London
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