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For immediate release Oct 5 2005 - New Alliance to tackle global challenge of chronic disease

Five international non-governmental organisations have pledged new action worldwide to combat obesity-driven chronic diseases.

The Global Prevention Alliance, working closely with the World Health Organization, brings together major NGOs concerned with diabetes, heart disease, nutrition, obesity and pediatric health, led by the International Obesity TaskForce (IOTF), part of the International Association for the Study of Obesity.

IOTF chair Professor Philip James, said Alliance partners had already swung into action with a series of meetings around the world with governments and national NGO leaders in developing countries to map out strategies to halt the rise of childhood obesity, as part of a broad approach to tackling the prevention of chronic disease. Welcoming the WHO's new report, Preventing chronic diseases: a vital investment, Professor James said: "This report makes the case for urgent national and global action to reduce chronic disease risks and burden.

"Now we in the Alliance are developing a large portfolio of recommendations for coherent strategies for all parts of government, not just the health ministries, to consider. We are challenging governments to support us in this work. We will get nowhere if we just rely on health ministries, and we must look at all the practical steps that need to be taken to encourage people to be active - such as building cities planned for people not cars - and to enable people to have healthier food supplies when they often find themselves cut off from decent sources of fresh food and end up eating processed foods of poor nutritional value.

"We have to start with the challenge of childhood obesity. If we do not turn back this tide, then the burden of chronic disease can only get worse. There is an urgent need to tackle obesity in adults too to actually cut back on the pressure of rising diabetes and heart disease that threatens to steal the prosperity that most developing countries are striving towards.

"Cutting death rates will not be enough. No health system and indeed no economy can afford the cost of ever increasing chronic disease that can be expensive to treat and result in years of disability and lost productivity. The only way to address this now is to recognize we need to revolutionise our approach to delivering healthier diets and reducing consumption of the foods high in fats, sugar and salt," Professor James added.

Professor James was the chair of the United Nations Commission on the Nutritional Challenges of the 21st Century, which reported both on malnutrition and the implications of poor nutrition on future chronic disease. "Many people from countries which have struggled or are even now still struggling with malnutrition are highly vulnerable to the diet and obesity-related chronic diseases. This legacy of deprivation makes it all the more important that we ensure that they can follow health-giving diets, rather than succumb to the western diets which are being heavily marketed in these countries but which in the long run can be lethal," Professor James warned.

The WHO report will be presented to Member States, partners and stakeholders in Geneva, Switzerland on 26 October 2005 at the WHO Forum on making partnerships work for health. WHO estimates that chronic disease will claim the lives of 35 million people in 2005 and an estimated 388 million people will die from chronic diseases over the next ten years. It says that premature deaths in countries such as China, India and the Russian Federation are projected to cost billions of dollars over the next 10 years. China alone will lose $558 billion over the next 10 years in foregone national income due to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

ends - For more information contact: Neville Rigby, Director of Policy and Public Affairs, IASO International Obesity TaskForce +44 7939250347

The WHO report can be downloaded from: http://www.who.int/chp/chronic_disease_report/